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LONGMANS' ENGLISH CLASSICS 



EDITED BY 



GEORGE RICE CARPENTER, A.B. 

PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC AND ENGLISH COMPOSITION IN COLUMBIA COLLEGE 



SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 



THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 



LONGMANS' ENGLISH CLASSICS 

EDITED BY 

GEORGE RICE CARPENTER, A.B. 

PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC AND ENGLISH COMPOSITION IN 
COLUMBIA COLLEGE 



With full Notes, Introductions, Bibliographies, and other 
Explanatory and Illustrative Matter. Crown 8w. Cloth. 



1. IRVING'S TALES OF A TRAVELLER. With Introduction 

by Professor Brander Matthews, of Columbia College, 
and Notes by the Editor of the Series. 

2. GEORGE ELIOT'S SILAS MARNER. Edited by Professor 

Robert Herrick, of the University of Chicago. 

3. SCOTT'S WOODSTOCK. Edited by Professor Bliss Perrt, 

of Princeton College. 

4. DEFOE'S HISTORY OF THE PLAGUE IN LONDON. 

Edited by Professor G. R. Carpenter, of Columbia College. 

5. WEBSTER'S FIRST BUNKER HILL ORATION, together 

with other Addresses relating to the Revolution. Edited by 
Professor F. N. Scott, of the University of Michigan. 

6. MACAULAY'S ESSAY ON MILTON. Edited by J. G. 
— Croswell, Head-Master of the Brearley School, formerly 

Assistant Professor in Harvard University. 

7. SHAKSPERE'S A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. Edited 

by Professor G. P. Baker, of Harvard University. 

8. MILTON'S L'ALLEGRO, IL PENSEROSO, COMUS, AND 

LYCIDAS. Edited by Professor W. P. Trent, of the 

University of the South. 

9. SHAKSPERE'S MERCHANT OF VENICE. Edited by Pro- 

fessor Francis B. Gummere, of Haverford College. 

10. COLERIDGE'S THE ANCIENT MARINER. Edited by 
Herbert Bates, Instructor in English in the University of 
Nebraska. 

Other volumes are in preparation. 



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1 



SAMUEL TAYLOK COLEKIDUE 
(After a painting by Washington Allston) 



K 



Congnuins' Q!nglisli Classics "^ . V Cb 

/ 

COLERIDGE'S 

THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT 
MARINER 



EDITED 

WITH NOTES AND AN INTRODUCTION 



HERBERT BATES, A.B. 

INSTRUCTOR IN ENGLISH IN THE UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 




^^^^^ 






LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 

LONDON AND BOMBAY 
1896 



Copyright, 1S95 

BY 

LO^'GMA^:S, GKEEX, AND CO. 



Press of J. J, Little & Ca 
Astor Place, New York 



PREFACE 

I HAVE treated this poem as introductory to poetry, 
aiming to help boys and girls to see the beauties of song- 
land. True, some seem elect, without aid ; others seem 
by nature debarred. There is, however, a great mean — 
the host of young people who may be taught to enjoy 
poetry. Editor and teacher must help them, not mere- 
ly by admiring, but by explaining admiration. Poetry 
reaches us, not by miracle, but by means most definite. 
The printed lines convey certain sounds pleasing in 
themselves. Yet to the untrained ear even this beauty 
must be demonstrated. Just so with the ideas, to us so 
suggestive. The student must be helped to grasp the 
idea, to master the material for emotion. His imagina- 
tion must do the rest. 

I have tried to avoid both extremes — cold analysis and 
vague appreciation. Appreciation can hardly be intel- 
ligibly conveyed. Analysis, carried too far, becomes 
mechanical, deadening,- leading even to snobbish patron- 
age of art so easily measured. It seems better, aiming 
at the mean, to explain the reason of our pleasure, and 
so lead others, first to see, then to feel, as we do. 

Such guidance is the object of this book. Alone it 
cannot accomplish this. The teacher is needed, the 
teacher who, feeling what poetry is, shall yet be will- 
ing patiently to slacken his pace, to explain, to encourage 
— perhaps along dull paths — other feet to the pleasant 
eminences of poetry. 

H. B. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Introduction ix 

Chronological Table xxxviii 

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner 1 



INTRODUCTION 



I. The Author 

"I have known/^ says Wordsworth, ^^ many men who 
have clone wonderful things, but the only wonderful man 
I ever saw was Coleridge/' Yet a recent critic speaks of 
this same man as a ^^ poetical Skimpole," who died " after 
four decades of inglorious dependence upon rich men's 
bounties." And, strange as it may seem, both are, in 
some measure, right. 

As a boy, Coleridge was unboylike, moping alone over 
story-books, or cutting down — a knight of his own imag- 
ined romances — ranks of unoffending thistles with his 
mimic sword. In part, this was due to his dreamy, im- 
aginative nature ; in part, to his delicate health, which 
kept him from ruder sports. But it was only for the first 
nine years of his life (] 772-1781) that he was to enjoy 
the quiet of his country home. The death of his father, 
the pedantic, lovable, unworldly rector of Ottery St. 
Mary's, left him an orphan, and he was taken away 
from his peaceful Devon to the great charity-school, 
Christ's Hospital, in the busy heart of London. 

Here, according to Charles Lamb, the life of a boy 
without friends — and Coleridge had none near — was far 
from happy. There was little food, often bad food, and 
sometimes savage injustice in the guise of discipline. Yet 
the strict government may have been good for Coleridge's 
wayward temperament ; and literature, however unkindly 
the guides, was an open land. Once, it is true, disheart- 



X INTRODUCTION 

eiied, he sought escaj^e in apprenticeship to a shoemaker, 
but was forced back into the reluctant pursuit of learn- 
ing. Yet, even under schoolmaster Bow3'er's frown, his' 
dream-life went on. One incident is amusing. He was 
walking the crowded Strand, — swimming, in mind and 
arms, an imaginary sea. His outstretched hand brushed 
a stranger^'s pocket. He was promptly grasped. ^' What, 
so young and so wicked ! '' " But I'm not a pickpocket, 
sir ; I thought I was Leander swimming the Hellespont.^^ 
And the stranger, admiring, obtained for him entrance to 
a circulating library. Years later, De Quincey speaks of 
the mature Coleridge's ^' difficulty in regaining his posi- 
tion amono- davlisfht realities.'' The man was no less a 
dreamer than the boy. 

Dreamer or no, Coleridge rose to be Ca^^tain, or first 
student. Consequently he was transferred, on leaving 
school, to Cambridge University, to Jesus College. Here 
he remained two years. But he took no degree. Debts ; 
failure to win a scholarship ; radical views in religion, 
which dis23leased the authorities ; and, De Quincey says, 
^•'a heavy disappointment in love," drove him friendless 
into the London streets. In discouragement, he joined a 
regiment of dragoons, under the name of " Comberback," 
appropriate to his horsemanship. But a pencilled lament 
in Latin betrayed him ; and his friends extricated him 
and sent him back to Cambridge. 

A few months, however, found him once more adrift, 
this time with a new friend, Eobert Southey, a poet of 
smaller genius but of bulkier accomplishment, another 
young dreamer of freedom, strayed from the University 
fold. These two, with a few kindred spirits, planned the 
Pantisocracy, an ideal community, a little like the later 
*' Brook Farm," to be founded in some terrestrial paradise 
beside the Susquehanna, where there would be but two 
hours of work each day, and poetry, philosophy, and 



INTRODUCTION xi 

golden dreams illimitable. But golden dreams require, 
alas, a golden foundation. The poet-emigrants got no far- 
ther than Bristol, Southey^s home. There their plans 
stopped, temporarily from lack of funds, ultimately from 
the intrusion of other interests. The two poets fell in 
love with two sisters. Southey married Edith Fricker, 
Coleridge married Sara, and the prospects of the Panti- 
socracy languished. 

Coleridge was never practical. Of all the steps of his 
life, however, including the enlisting, his marriage was 
the maddest. His total income, except for a condi- 
tional offer of a few pounds from a publisher, was approx- 
imately nothing. But he had " no solicitude on the 
subject." He hoped, indeed, to raise enough produce on 
his little patch of ground to support himself and his 
^'^ pensive Sara." Of course his unsubstantial plans failed 
to produce substantial results. He tried one device after 
another — lectured, established a newspaper, published his 
'•' Juvenile Poems," wrote for the Morning Clironide, 
took private pupils, and preached in local Unitarian 
churches — yet, had it not been for the kindly help of 
Southey and of the publisher Cottle, he could hardly have 
contrived to pay the expenses of life. 

Hemember, however, that this inadequacy was not en- 
tirely his fault. His liealth was poor — it had been from 
the first. His best work had to be done spontaneously ; 
the knowledge that he must do well seemed to embarrass 
him. Besides, his home life was unhappy. His wife did 
not understand him, nor could he sympathize with her. 
Severe attacks of facial neuralgia, too, were driving him 
to the use of laudanum, the drug that was, for the rest of 
his life, in the words of Foster, '^'^to shatter the most 
extraordinary faculties I have ever yet seen resident in a 
form of flesh and blood." 

Yet, little as he had accomplished, it is at this tim.3 



xii INTRODUCTION 

that Hazlitt writes of him, '' You wished him to talk for- 
ever. His genius had angelic wings/' All who met him 
felt that this young man was remarkable. 

Yet what, in 1796 — just one year before the writing of 
the " Ancient Mariner '' — had this remarkable young man 
actually accomplished ? His early poems are of no great 
merit. Swinburne doubts whether the " Religious Mus- 
ings " or the '^ Lines to a Young Ass" '^ be the more 
damnable," but notes '' Time, Real and Imaginary " as 
the " sweetest among the verses of boys who were to grow 
up great." The promise, such as it is, is indefinite ; the 
bud hints little of the fruit. The verse is conventional, 
of but formal excellence. The poet had not yet awakened 
to his real self. Nor was Southey the man to awake him. 
The man who could rouse him, who did rouse him, was 
yet to come into his life. 

This new influence was William Wordsworth, then poet 
merely in prospect, his verses penned but unprinted, 
pondering his theories, and preaching his doctrines to a 
little admiring circle. It was in 1797 that Coleridge met 
him. Their removal to Nether-stoAvey brought the two 
poets together and led to one of the most famous and most 
fruitful of poetic intimacies, a friendship that affected 
the whole history of English literature. 

Let us see Coleridge with the eyes of Dorothy Words- 
worth. ^' At first," she writes, '^ I thought him very 
plain, that is for about three minutes. He is pale, has a 
wide mouth, thick lips, and not very good teeth, longish, 
loose-growing, half-curling, rough black hair. But if 
you hear him speak for five minutes, you think no more 
of these." Hazlitt, another of the group, says, " His 
forehead is broad and high, light, as if built of ivory, 
with large projecting eyebrows ; and his eyes rolled be- 
riCath them like a sea with darkened lustre. He removed 
iJl doubts by beginning to talk. He did not cease while 

/ 



\ 



INTRODUCTION xiii 

he stayed, nor has he since, that I know of." De Quincey 
says of his eyes, '' And it was from the peculiar appear- 
ance of haziness or dreaminess, which mixed Avith their 
light, that I recognized my object/' 

He immediately captivated Wordsworth ; in fact the 
captivation was mutual. And mutual admiration is not 
a bad thing for genius of a disheartened turn. The two 
became at once inseparable, each bringing out the other's 
best, pacing the windy downs, with no companion but 
the admiring Dorothy. True, their choice of walks dif- 
fered. Coleridge liked *' uneven ground,'' loved to 
*^ break through straggling branches of copsewood;" 
Wordsworth preferred "a straight gravel walk," with no 
'^collateral interruptions," — tastes, by the way, oddly 
suggestive of the differences of their poetry. The 
country was ideal, " with woods, smooth down, valleys 
with brooks running down through green meadows to 
the sea." '' Whether," says Professor Shairp, '^ it was 
the freedom from the material ills of life, or the secluded 
beauty of the Quantock, or the converse with Words- 
worth, or all combined, there cannot be any doubt that 
this was, as it lias been called, his cmjms mirahilis, his 
poetic prime. It was the year of "^ Genevieve,' ' The 
Dark Ladie,' ' Kubla Khan,' the * Ode to France,' the 
''Lines to Wordsworth,' the '^ Ancient Mariner,' and the 
' First Part of Christabel,' not to mention many other 
poems of less mark. It was to Wordsworth the hopeful 
dawning of a new day which completely fulfilled itself ; 
to Coleridge, the brief blink of a poetic morning which 
had no noon." 

" Here," says Mrs. Oliphant, '' the two poets came to 
the edge of their first joint publication, a book which, 
amid all its manifold imperfections, its presumptions and 
assumptions, was yet to give the world assurance of two 
lights of the greatest magnitude in its firmament." This 



xiv INTRODUCTION 

publication was the ^'^ Lyrical Ballads/^ At the time, 
little but the imperfections received notice, though — in 
comparison with Wordsworth, the prime offender — Cole- 
ridge escaped with light criticism. Coleridge had con- 
tributed little, — the " Rime of the Ancient Mariner," 
and a few other poems. The rest of the volume illus- 
trated Wordsworth's theories of poetry, which, stated 
briefly, were that the simple emotions of daily life and the 
simple details of daily life are not out of place iu poetry. 
These simple emotions, Wordsworth further held, should 
be expressed in the simple language of daily life, in the 
language of peasants, not in any artificial ^^ poetic dic- 
tion/' There is obviously much truth in this. Words- 
worth, however, stated his case in the most aggressive 
way. In a few poems, too, he carried his practice too 
far, writing of '^ idiot boys'' and *^ household tubs," giv- 
ing, undeniably, good opportunity for ridicule. And the 
critics, taking advantage of this, ignored all tlie real 
beauty of the poems. Coleridge, it seems, understood 
Wordsworth's theory even better than did W^ordsworth 
himself, and did much, afterwards, to explain what his 
friend really aimed at. But, be the theory as it might, 
the new manner was to prevail, and the publication of 
the '^'Ballads" marked, in the history of English poetry, 
a revolution heralded by Burns, Cowper, and Blake, but 
now first understandingly set afoot by these young cham- 
pions of simplicity. 

The '^Rime of the Ancient Mariner," save in its irreg- 
ular metre, its moral of love for the humblest of creatures, 
and its very simple diction, bears little trace of this new 
manner of poetry. It seems, indeed, to have been re- 
garded as rather a fiat failure, or, as Sou they termed it, 
^''avery Dutch attempt at the sublime." Even Words- 
worth failed to find in it any great merit. It is interest- 
ing to read his note in a subsequent edition. He says 



INTROD UGTION xv 

that the reader owes to him the republication of the 
jDoem : — 

"The Author was himself very desirous that it should be sup- 
pressed. This has arisen from a consciousness of the defects of the 
Poem, and from a knowledge that many Persons had been much 
displeased with it. The Poem of my Friend has, indeed, many great 
defects ; first, that the principal person has no distinct character, 
either in his profession of Mariner, or as a human being who having 
been long under the control of supernatural impressions, might be 
supposed himself to partake of something supernatural ; secondly, 
that he does not act, but is constantly acted upon ; thirdly, that the 
events having no necessary connection, do not produce' each other ; 
and lastly, that the imagery is somewhat too laboriously accumulated. 
Yet the Poem contains many delicate touches of passion, and indeed, 
the passion is everywhere true to Nature ; a great many of the stanzas 
present beautiful images, and are expressed with unusual felicity of 
language ; and the versification, tho' the metre is in itself unfit for 
long poems, is harmonious and artfully varied, exhibiting the utmost 
power of that metre, and every variety of which it is capable. It 
therefore appeared to me that these several merits (the first of which, 
namely, that of the passion, is of the highest kind) gave to the Poem 
a value which is not often possessed by better Poems. On this ac- 
count, I requested of my Friend to permit me to republish it." 

It was not, in fact, for years, that the '^^ Ancient Mariner '^ 
took its present deserved position as one of the immortal 
poems of tlie language. Coleridge had written ahead of 
his time. He had to wait for appreciation. 

His life, after this, we may pass over rapidly. In many 
ways the story is cheerless. It was the philosopher who 
lived on. The poet, the best of him, seems to have passed 
away with the passing of that year at Quantock. 

For a year or so Coleridge travelled in Germany with 
the Wordsworths, studying a little, and translating Schil- 
ler's ^^ Death of Wallenstein.'' In 1799 he retired with 
Wordsworth into the Lake resfion of northern Eno^land — 
a region that gave to this group, Southey, Coleridge, and 



xvi INTRODUCTION 

Wordsworth, the name of the ^^ Lake School." There 
AVordsworth remained. Not so Coleridge. Separated en- 
tirely from liis family, Avho were supported by the less 
gifted but more dutiful Southey, he roamed at large. 
He made short flights to London, once even to Malta, 
returning always to the old shelter, to the old com- 
panions, who, however, shattered as he was in health and 
will, could no longer stimulate him to poetic effort. 

In 1814, determined to overcome the opium-habit, he 
placed himself under the care of Mr. Gilman of High- 
gate, near .London. With this help, to some degree, he 
succeeded, but it was too late to recall the best of his 
powers. He still wrote brilliant fragments of verse, but 
his work as poet was virtually closed. His new work, 
different as it was, was no less wonderful. "A Doctor 
Johnson of the nineteenth century," he still talked mar- 
vellously to groups of admiring friends, to young poets, 
young critics, young philosopliers, who came from far and 
near to hear him, most with reverence ; a few, like Oar- 
lyle, in the gruff contempt of youth. It Avas in these 
later years that he accomplished the bulk of his prose 
work — work that established his reputation as philosopher 
and as critic. And so he lived, till, at last, after fifteen 
years, the end came, the visit of '' gentle Sleep, with 
wings of healing." 

Coleridge had, he owned, a '' smack of Hamlet " in him. 
He realized, it was his burden to realize, his own inade- 
quacy. It was, in part, this that drove him into philo- 
sophic speculation. 

*' There was a time when, though my path was rough, 

This joy within me dallied with distress, 
And all misfortunes were but as the stuff 

Whence Fancy made me dreams of happiness. 
For hope grew round me like the twining vine. 
And fruit and foliage not my own seemed mine. 



INTRODUCTION xvii 

But now afflictions bow me to the earth, 

Nor care I that they rob rae of my mirth, 
But oh ! each visitation 

Suspends what Nature gave me at my birth, 
My shaping power of imagination. 

For not to think of what I needs must feel. 
But to be still and patient, all I can ; 

And haply by abstruse research to seal 

From my own nature all the natural man ; — 
This was my sole resource, my only plan : 

Till that which suits a part infects the whole, 

And now is almost grown the habit of my soul." 

He lacked self-help, — needed, as Mrs. Oliphant said, 
" to weave himself in with some more steady, more deep- 
rooted being." As to his philosophy, critics disagree. 
Some say that its golden haze hinted more than it really 
hid. Almost certainly the philosophy ultimately spoiled 
the poet. And yet his fame as philosopher dwindles year 
by year. It is as poet that he will live. " The highest 
lyric work," says Mr. Swinburne, '^ is either passionate or 
imaginative ; of passionate, Coleridge has nothing ;. but 
for height and perfection of imaginative quality, he is 
the greatest of lyric poets. This was his special power, 
and this is his special 23raise." 

II. The Origin^ of the Poem. 

Of this Wordsworth gives the following account : 

"In the autumn of 1797, he (Coleridge), my sister, and myself, 
started from Alfoxden pretty late in the afternoon, with a view to 
visit Linton and the Valley of Stones near to it ; and as our united 
funds were small, we agreed to defray the expense of the tour by writ- 
ing a poem to be sent to the Neiv 31ontMy Magazine. Accordingly 
we set off, and proceeded along the Quantock hills, towards Watchet, 
and in the course of this walk was planned the poem of the 'Ancient 
Mariner,' founded on a dream,* as Mr. Coleridge said, of his friend 
* A dream of " a skeleton ship with figures in it." 



XVlll 



INTRODUCTION 



Mr. Ci'uikshank. Much the greatest part of the story was Mr. Cole- 
ridge's invention ; but certain parts I suggested ; for example, some 
crime was to be committed which should bring upon the 'Old Navi- 
gator,' as Coleridge afterward delighted to call him, the spectral 
persecution, as a consequence of the crime and of his own wander- 
ings. I had been reading in Shelvocke's ' Voyages ' a day or two before 
that while doubling Cape Horn, they frequently saw Albatrosses 
in that latitude, the largest sort of sea-fowl, some extending their 
wings twelve or thirteen feet. ' Suppose,' said I, 'you represent him 
as having killed one of these birds on entering the South Sea, and 
that the tutelary spirits of these regions take upon them to avenge 
the crime.' The incident w^as thought fit for the purpose, and 
adopted accordingly. I also suggested the navigation of the ship by 
the dead men, but do not recollect that I had anything more to do 
with the scheme of the poem. The gloss with which it was subse- 
quently accompanied was not thought of by either of us at the time, 
at least not a hint of it was given to me, and I have no doubt it was 
a gratuitous afterthought. We began the composition together, on 
that to me memorable evening. I furnished two or three lines at the 
beginning of the poem, in particular, 

' And listened like a three years' child : 
The Mariner had his will.' 

These trifling contributions, all but one, which Mr. C. has with 
unnecessary scrupulosity recorded, slipped out of his mind, as well 
they might. As we endeavored to proceed conjointly (I speak of 
the same evening) our respective manners proved so widely different 
that it would have been quite presumptuous for me to do anything 
but separate from an undertaking upon which I could only have 
been a clog. . . . We returned by Duburton to Alfoxden. The 
' Ancient Mariner,' grew and grew till it became too important for 
our first object, which was limited to our expectation of five pounds; 
and we began to think of a volume, which was to consist, as Mr. 
Coleridge has told the world, of poems chiefly on supernatural sub- 
jects, taken from common life, but looked at, as much as might be, 
through an imaginative medium." — "Memoirs of William Words- 
worth," by Christopher Wordsworth. 

The passage from Slielvocke is as follows : 
"They saw no fish, nor one sea-bird, except a disconsolate black 
Albitross, who accompanied us for several days, hoA^ering about us as 



I 



INTRODUCTION xix 

if he had lost himself, till Hatley (my second captain), observing in 
one of his melancholy fits that this bird was always hovering near us, 
imagined from his color that it might be some ill-omen. That which, 
I supposed, induced him the more to encourage his superstition 
was the continued series of contrary tempestuous winds, which had 
oppressed us ever since we had got into this sea. But, be that as it 
would, he after some fruitless attempts at length shot the albitross, 
not doubting (perhaps) that we should have a fair wind after it." — 
Shelvockc, "Voyage round the World," 1726. 

Coleridge says, with regard to the origin of the poem : 

" The incidents and agents were to be, in part at least, supernatural, 
and the excellence aimed at was to consist in the interesting of the 
affections by the dramatic truth of such emotions as would naturally 
accompany such situations, supposing them real. And real in this 
sense they have been to every human being who, from whatever 
source of delusion, has at any time believed himself under super- 
natural agency. ... In this idea originated the plan of the 
' Lyrical Ballads,' in which it was agreed that my endeavors should be 
directed to persons and characters supernatural or at least romantic, 
yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a 
semblance of truth sufficient to secure for these shadows of imagina- 
tion that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment which con- 
stitutes poetic faith." — "Biographia Literaria." 

These accounts are valuable as showing from how many 
sources the creative mind may absorb its material. But 
the poem, composed of all these stray elements, is no 
more a collection of them than a fire is a mere collection 
of the various twigs, straw^, and papers that feed it. Every 
one of us, in every day, stores up a little saving of sights, 
sounds, and thoughts. A creative mind will, at some later 
day, transform all these into some new whole, sprung 
from, but unlike, any of its various sources. Imagina- 
tion is but a transubstantiation of fact, a transmuting of 
the commonplace. And genius is but a rare endowment 
of this transmuting imagination. 



XX INTRODUCTION 



III. The Form of the Poem. 

The ^^ Ancient Miiriner" is a poem in substance and in 
form. Let us first examine this form. Read aloud the 
first stanza. It does not^ you see, sound like ordinary 
prose. What is the difference ? It is not in the rhyme, 
for, if you change '^ one of three ^^ to " one of five/' the 
sound will still be unlike that of prose. 

Read the stanza a second time, this time after a ^' sing- 
song " fashion. You will find that you pronounce some 
syllables heavily, — with emphasis, or stress ; while others 
you pass over lightly. Your reading will be much like 

this : 

It is an dnciQiit mdrmer, 

And he stopiiQth. one of three, 
By thy long gray he^rd and glittQvmg eye, 

Now tvheretore stdppst thou we?" 

See now, if, in these light and heavy syllables, you can- 
not find some system. Write out a '^ scheme '^ of the 
stanza, marking the heavy, emphasized sounds ^, and 
the light sounds, which you pass over quickly, w. You 
will find the result as follows : 

Vy" _^ 1^ ^ \^ _^ V^ O* 
V^ <^ ^^ V^ -£. v^ -£. 

W ^ V^ -i- V^ ^ 

No two heavy syllables come together, and there are 
never, between two heavy syllables, more than two light 
syllables, — usually there is only one. You might say, 
then, that the syllables usually come by turns, first one 
light, then one heavy, etc., or, better still, that the line 
consists, for the most part, of groiqys of two syllables, and 

* Tlie emphasis on the last syllable of mariner is slight, merely a secondary accent. 



INTRODUCTION xxi 

that in each group the first is light, the second heavy. 
If there are three syllables, the first two are light. These 
groups are called feet. 

Examine, now, any line in the poem. You will find 
the same thing true. We may, then, make a rule. The 
poem, we may say, consists of groups of syllables, each 
group consisting of two syllables, or sometimes of three. 
In each group, one syllable receives extra emphasis, a 
little more than any other syllable in the same group. 

This is the rule, not only for this poem, but for all 
English poetry. If, then, you arrange words so that the 
emphatic syllables, when read naturally, will come at 
these intervals, you will be making verse. You will, at 
least, if you comply with one more condition. 

The poem, we have seen, consists of groups of syllables, 
and these groups we called feet. There is another divi- 
sion. The poem is jorinted in lines. Each line contains a 
certain number of feet. Eurthermore, the whole poem 
consists of groups of lines, or sta7izas. How are these 
made up ? In each stanza of four lines, you will find that 
the first and third lines contain four groups ; the second 
and fourth, three groups. That is, there is a larger 
grouping than feet. As feet are groups of syllables, so 
lines are groups of feet, and stanzas are groups of lines. 
And all these must follow some regular rule, or, at least, 
some principle of symmetry. 

If you can, now, arrange words so that they will natu- 
rally be read in this way, you will be writing verse. Try 
writing a stanza that shall sound like the first stanza of 
the ^^ Ancient Mariner." By imitating the effect, you will 
the better appreciate the art. 

In this 2:)oem, every group — with a variation that will 
be spoken of later — begins with a light syllable, and ends 
with an emphasized syllable. Such a foot, if of two syl- 
lables, is called iambic ; if of three, anapestic. In the 



xxii INTRODUCTION 

first stanza the first four groups are iambic ; the fifth, ana- 
pestic ; the sixth and seventh, iambic ; the eighth, ana- 
pestic ; the ninth and tenth, iambic ; the eleventh, anapes- 
tic. Examine other stanzas in the same way. 

If you have studied music at all, you will see that verse 
is much like music. In music, the groups are called 
measures ; in verse, they are called feet. In music, the 
accent is always at the beginning of the measure. So it 
is in some kinds of verse ; in this kind, however, it is 
always at the end. A measure in music may have many 
notes. A measure in verse very seldom indeed has over 
three. In music, you find length, pitch, and even accent 
indicated. In verse, your only guide is the natural pro- 
nunciation of the words, which shows you where to put 
the emphasis. But there is one marked resemblance. In 
music, in two measures of the same length, one measure 
will have two notes, say a half note and a quarter note ; 
another will have three notes, say three quarter notes.' 
And these two measures are equivalent in time. Just 
so, in verse, an anapest, of three syllables, takes no more 
tmie than an iambic foot, of two. The syllables are pro- 
nounced more quickly, made shorter— that is all. And 
this usually gives the line an effect of speed and light- 
ness. 

Observe, for instance, stanza Iviii. There one line is 
made up entirely of anapests,— - And the sky and the sea 
and the sea and the sky/^ This is not " irregular/^ Cole- 
ridge chose this form deliberately. If he had wished 
he could have written -And sky and sea, and sea and 
sky.^^ But he preferred the swifter effect, and so used 
anapests. 

Let us now, having established our rule, look at the 
exceptions. Take, first, those in the form of the feet. 
The ^second line of stanza vi. runs, ^ Merrily did we 
drop.^' Surely we cannot say -Merr^ly.^' The right 



INTRODUCTION xxiii 

reading is the natural reading, ^' Merrily did we drop/"* 
or, putting it in symbols, -^ v^ ^ ^ w ^ . What has hap- 
pened ? The first foot has simply been inverted. The 
heavy syllable comes, not at the end, but at the beginning. 
Instead of being iambic, the first foot has become, in 
terms of verse, trochaic. The line has the usual number 
of groups and of syllables in the groups, but the arrange- 
ment is varied ; the accent has been drawn ahead, as in 
syncopation in music. This gives a pleasant variety to 
the sound. Other lines of the same kind are " Hither to 
work us weal," '' Red as a rose is she,'^ " Nodding 
their heads before her goes." Try to find others. 

The 2^06^11^ we have seen, is divided into lines, and 
these lines are combined in groups, called stanzas. These 
groups consist, usually, of four lines. In each, the first 
and third lines are of four feet, the second and fourth of 
three. That is, each stanza can be divided into two parts, 
into halves, each of these having one line of four feet and 
one of three. And the last syllable of the first half 
rhymes with the last syllable of the second. In the first 
stanza, for example, ^^ three "at the end of line tw^ 
rhymes with ^'^me" at the end of line four. All this 
results in a certain balance between the two parts, a cer- 
tain symmetry. Those who have studied music will see it 
is a little like the phrasing that one finds there. Eead the 
first few stanzas aloud and note the symmetry of sound. 
Look at the printed page and see how it is represented in 
the form. The two parts of the stanza match, both to ear 
and to eye. 

This stanza is imitated from old ballads. Compare, for 
instance, the following : 

" It fell about the Martinmas 

Whan nichts are lang and mirk, 
That the carline wife's three sons came hame, 
And their hats were o' the birk. 



xxiv INTRODUCTION 

** It neither grew in syke nor ditch, 
Nor yet in ony sheugh, 
But at the gates o' Paradise 
That birk grew fair eneugh." 



** The cock doth craw, the day doth daw, 
The channerin' worm doth chide. 
Gin we be mist out o' our place, 
A sair pain we maun bide." 

You will find this stanza, too, in many hymns, — in, for 
example, '' There is a green hill far away.^^ It is of all 
stanzas, probably, the most common. 

What variations does Coleridge introduce into the form 
of this stanza ? We see at first sight that there are some, 
for the stanzas are many of them of more than four lines. 
AYhere are the extra lines inserted ? What is the effect of 
their presence on the rhyme-system ? Let us take up the 
variations one by one. 

The first consist in adding, after the third line, an 
extra line, rhyming with the line that it follows, suspend- 
ing, so to speak, the flow of the stanza. Such in stanza 
Ixxix. is the line, " Which to their corses came again." 
If this line be omitted, the stanza will be like any four- 
line stanza. Of the same kind are stanzas xxxix., xliv., 
xlv., Ixii., Ixiii., Ixiv., Ixxii., Ixxiv., Ixxxii., Ixxxix., 
cxxii., cxxxviii. In stanza xii., the extra line follows 
the first line, instead of following the third. 

Another variation is in adding two lines, following out 
the regular structure. Line five, like lines one and three, 
is unrhymed. Line six rhymes with lines two and four. 
Of this t^qoe are stanzas * xxiii., * xxiv., * xli., Ix., * Ixv., 
Ixxxiv., Ixxxvi., *lxxxvii., cii., cxvii., cxxi., cxxvi., 
cxxix., cxxxv. Stanzas marked* rej)eat, in line six, the 
rhyme-word of line four. 

Stanza xlviii. contains all these variations. It ap- 



I 



INTRODUCTION xxv 

proaches veiy closely^ and may have suggested, the stanza 
that Scott uses in '^^Marmion.'' 

Observe, in addition to what is noted above, alliteration^ 
the repeating of the same sound — not necessarily of the 
same letter — at the beginning of words that stand near 
together, as in, " The Z'reeze to 1)\o\y/' the '' ^6'estern ^rave,""* 
etc. Watch for instances of this. Observe its effect. 

You will find, too, what is known as " medial rhyme," 
where the middle of the line rhymes with the end of the 
same line, as in " The guests are met, the feast is set" 
or, ^'And he shone hriglit, and on the right." Usually 
this occurs in the third line of the four-line stanza, or in 
the corresponding line of the longer stanzas. 

Remember that all this deals only with the form. 
Verse may be perfect in form, and yet have not a spark 
of poetry. We have found what makes verse. Let us 
see what more is needed to make a poem. 



IV. What is Poetry ? 

The ^' Ancient Mariner " is a poem. What do we mean 
by that ? Simply that it is written in the form known as 
verse ? By no means. There must be something more. 
Not only must poetry have verse ; verse should, to make 
a poem, have added to it — poetry. And what is this 
poetry ? Certainly it is not poetry to say, — 

" I put my hat upon my heacP, 
And went into the Strand, 
And there I met another man, 
Whose hat was in his hand." 

This has the form of poetry ; but what is wanting ? Are 
the words too simple ? Look at another stanza, this time 
from the " Ancient Mariner ^^ : 



xxvi INTRODUCTION 

" We drifted o'er the harbor-bar, 

And I with sobs did pray — 
' let me be awake, my God ! 
Or let me sleep alway.' " 

Here the words are no less simple, and the sound is very 
much the same. AVliat is the difference ? What is in 
one that is not in the other ? Nothing in the first would 
move anybody's feelings. Few, in reading the second, 
can fail to feel emotion. The first states facts that neither 
we nor the writer care anything about. The second ex- 
presses an emotion that aj)peals at once to all. Here is 
one difference — intensity of feeling. 

But all intensity of feeling would not make poetry. 
Suppose you miss a train, are insulted by a street-car con- 
ductor, are exultant over a shrewd bargain in business. 
Would feeling of this sort fit poetry ? Apparently, then, 
we must limit the kind of feeling. It must have dignity, 
a certain elevation, a certain beauty, and must be seen, 
not too crudely, but through softening, enhancing mists 
of imagination. Emotion, then, dignified, beautiful, 
idealized, — not immediate, but recollected in tranquil- 
lity — is one thing needed. And this is about as far as 
we can go. Poetry, some say, is heightened expression. 
It demands heightened thoughts, intensified feeling. To 
write a poem, one must attempt to utter the unutterable ;■ 
the greater the poem, the more approximate the success. 
But it can never, of itself, quite accomplish its aim. It 
can but take the reader near to the poet^s original inspiring 
vision — within sight, perhaps within touch. It is for the 
reader to complete the work ; take, with his own imagina- 
tion, the last step ; bridge the abyss and stand where the 
poet stands, where he invites. 

And this imagination, this ability to respond to the 
summons of poetry, you must find by patience, by con- 
stant fellowship with the best of the woidd's poets, by 



INTRODUCTION \ 

open sympatli}^, by steady striving to cultivate, in your- 
self, the poet-sense of the wonder, the unexplored infini- 
tude, of the things about us and over us. 

How shall you best appreciate this particular poem ? 
That is the next point to consider. 

Y. Method of Study. 

At the outset, let us see what not to do. Do not study 
the poem as a piece of English to be ^' parsed." Do not, if 
you are a teacher, make your pupils rewrite it into prose. 
It is not meant to be written in prose. Poetical ideas are 
meant for poetry ; in prose they are out of place — as awk- 
ward as the poor Albatross must have been if he tried 
to walk the ship's deck. Do not make of the poem a 
combined edition of grammar, spelling-book, dictionary, 
rhetoric, and encyclopedia. It is a poem, and as a poem it 
should be studied. 

Avoid merely mechanical methods of study. Point 
out, for examples, words that are suggestive, picturesque, 
poetic, — words that suggest a whole clause of description. 
Do not, however, think that the poetry lies in these par- 
ticular words. They are suggestive here. In another 
place they would be, very likely, as prosaic as any others. 
Too elaborate analysis of the essence of poetry will fail of 
its end. You will merely kill tlie goose, and get not a 
golden Qgg for your pains. Macaulay was right in say- 
ing, ^^ The man who is best able to take a machine to 
pieces will be the man most competent to form another 
machine of similar power. In the branches of physical 
and moral science which admit of perfect analysis, he who 
can resolve will be able to combine. But the analysis 
which criticism can make of poetry is necessarily imper- 
fect. One element must forever elude its researches, and 
that is the very element by which poetry is poetry.'"' 



xxviii INTRODUCTION 

How, then, shall Ave approach the poem ? What plan 
will lead, most helpfully, to sympathetic appreciation ? 

First, gather from tlie pages that have gone before, the 
individnality of the man who wrote the poem. Next, get, 
incidentally, an idea of why he told the story. After that 
read the whole poem through, rapidly, at one sitting. Then 
you will be ready to study it. 

" Study ^^ has, perhaps, an unfortunate suggestion. It 
recalls struggles with Latin and Greek poems. Say, 
then, rather, that you are to endeavor to extract from 
the poem, not merely Avhat you catch up in casual and 
careless reading, but what you can garner by diligent, 
appreciative search, stanza by stanza, line by line. In 
Avriting it, the poet pondered every detail. In reading 
it, ponder, in your turn, each slightest sign, that it may 
render up to you the significance that he entrusted to it. 

You may hurry through a gallery of paintings, getting 
but a blurred glimpse of the Avhole array. Or you may 
work your way through, step by step, studying each can- 
vas till you are sure you can make it mean to you what 
it meant to the man that made it. In this poem, each 
stanza is a picture. Slow study, sympathetic repetition, 
will bring out beauties that the hasty reader gets no 
hint of. What is more, whenever, afterward, you read 
the poem rapidly — just as Avhen you pass through the 
gallery rapidly — you will get, in your passing glance, 
not merely the blurred glimpse, but you will recall, on 
the hint of that, all the beauty that you may have found 
in your hour of study. The riches, once extracted, will 
never relapse. 

How is such study to be directed ? Not, as I have said, 
to derivations and such philological facts. These are use- 
ful, but this is not the place for them. Here they are 
useful only so far as they enable you to grasp the poet's 
precise meaning. It is to help you in this that the notes 



INTROD UCTION xx i x 

are inserted, not to administer information important in 
itself. 

Gain from study of a i^oem is twofold : appreciation of 
what the poet says, and appreciation of the art by which 
he says it. Add the poet's vision to your vision. Add 
too, to your OAvn power of expression, a little, if only the 
tiniest fragment, of the power that you find in him. 

How are you to appreciate what the poet says ? Resolve 
to see every scene distinctly. Picture, for example, the 
*^ three ^^ on the way to the feast, and the gaunt figure 
of the Ancient Mariner, picking out, with his glittering- 
eye, the '^one^^ who must hear his tale. See, if you can, 
some good illustrations. Dore's, while over-wrought, 
may prove suggestive. But, if your imagination be vivid, 
it Avill show you better pictures than you can find printed 
or engraved. In this process the teacher should help, by 
questioning his pupils with regard to each scene, and by 
having them compare the mental pictures that they see. 
This will suggest to each much that would have otherwise 
passed unnoticed. 

Build up each scene from its detail. See, for example, 
that the " ship '^ be not modern. It uiust harmonize with 
the Ancient ^Mariner. Recall, if you saw them at the 
WorkVs Fair, the models of the Columbus caravels. If 
you live by the sea, or have ever seen it, recall, from your 
own experience, scenes of calm, of storm, of moonrise, of 
sunset. If you have never seen the sea, recall pictures of 
the sky, of northern lights, star-dogged moons, bloody 
suns. How many of all the pictures in the poem can you 
duplicate in your own experience ? Remember that, after 
this, when you see these things again — a sea-bird following 
a ship, a harbor '^ strewn with level light " — you will ap- 
preciate them the more for having seen them here, under 
guidance of this sovereign lover of nature^s magic, ap- 
proaching them through the golden gate of poetry. 



XXX INTRODUCTION 

Try to appreciate, too, tlie poet's art. Ask constantly 
what artistic impulse prompted him to select this word, 
this incident, this metrical form. Why could it not, just 
as well, have been otherwise ? Think of all the possible 
means of expression, all the possible turns of the story, 
and try to decide wh}^, of all these, he settled on those 
before us. Examine every detail of the work. Try to 
find what purpose — jDerhaps, what unconscious purpose 
— inspired it. But do not, in this, lose sight of the 
more important thing — the emotion that pervades the 
whole. 

For method, take a few stanzas at each lesson, dwelling 
on each till, if possible, you have absorbed it into your 
memory, — not only in its words but in its spirit — till its 
poetry has become part of you, without the aid of printed 
letters. Try to enjoy without scorning study, and to study 
^vithout missing enjoyment. Poetry, without pleasure, is 
profitless. 

VI. The Purpose of the Poem. 

Some will tell you to " interpret "' the poem. You would 
do better not to make the attempt. Shakespeare and 
Browning may need '^ interpreting '' — certainly they get it. 
But beware lest you extract from poems ideas which the 
authors never put in, — which have, in fact, originated in 
your own '^^ inner consciousness." As to the ''^Ancient 
Mariner," we have Coleridge's own assurance tliat it is 
innocent of deeper meaning than appears on the face : 

"Mrs. Barbaiild once told me that she admired the ' Ancient Mar- 
iner ' very much, but that there were two faults in it, — it was improb- 
able and had no moral. As for the probability, I owned that that 
might admit some question ; but as to the want of a moral, I told 
her that, in my judgment, the poem had too much, and that the only 
or chief fault, if I might say so, was the obtrusion of the moral senti- 



INTRODUCTION xxxi 

ment so openly on the reader as a principle or cause of action in a 
work of such pure imagination. It ought to have no more moral 
than the Arabian Nights' tale of the merchant's sitting down to eat 
dates by the side of a well, and throwing the shells aside, and lo ! a 
geni starts up, and says he must kill the aforesaid merchant, be- 
cause one of the date-shells had, it seemed, put out the eye of the 
geni's son."' — Coleridge, "Table-talk" (p. 324). 

Coleridge's leading idea was, it seems (see p. xvii.), 
merely to comjiose a thrilling poem of the snpernatural, 
founded on his friend\s strange dream of a ship full of 
dead men. The leading idea must have been the mystery 
of the ocean-spaces, where anything was possible ; and the 
presence of those beings invisible, inhabitants of every ele- 
ment. And it is through these stronger motives that we 
hear, like a quiet flute in the turmoil of an orchestra, 
the tender teaching, '^ He prayeth best who loveth best." 

A few say that the poem is an allegory, setting forth, 
in the form of a story, — as does " Pilgrim's Progress" — a 
" profound philosophy of life." The ship, such tell us, 
is 'Mife, or a life" ; the voyage, progress from childhood 
to maturity, ^' when the Me begins to be conscious of itself 
through the pressure upon it of the Not-me." One critic 
says that, without such interpretation, the poem is '^^ a 
mere musical farrago." Some of us may prefer musical 
farragos to unmusical metaphysics. Let us take the 
poem as Coleridge meant it, not as ingenious men may 
contrive to imagine that he meant it. Do not let people 
steal from you this beautiful dreamland storv, to turn it 
into rather a commonplace sermon. True ''interpreta- 
tion" is that which is content to accept, with humble ad- 
miration, the author's simple meaning. 

What is the lesson of the jioem ? You will find a little 
of it in the beautiful stanza that tells us to love all crea- 
tures, great and small. You will find far more in the 
spirit of the whole poem— a spirit to whicli hill and plain. 



xxxii INTRODUCTION 

sea and sky, have not lost their primal Avonder, — the splen- 
dor of the time 

" When meadow, grove, and stream, 
The earth and every common sight 

.... did seem 
Apparelled in celestial light, 
The gh)ry and the freshness of a dream." 

VII. Wider Readin^g. 

Read, besides the ^' Ancient Mariner," a few more of 
Coleridge^s poems. ^' Christabel," especially the First 
Part, you will be sure to enjoy, particularly if you will be 
content to appreciate the mystery without demanding an 
explanation. The whole charm of the poem lies in its 
being beyond explanation. '^ Kubla Khan " you will find 
fascinating — most of all, the first lines. Swinburne says of 
this, '^ For absolute melody and splendor, it were hardly 
rash to call it the first poem in the language, a supreme 
model of music, a model unapproachable except by Shel- 
ley.''^ You might read, besides these, the '^ Ode to France,"*' 
the '' Ode to Dejection," the ^' Lines to Wordsworth," 
" The Dark Ladie," " Love," and '' Frost at Midnight." 
After this yon may wander through the pages of his 
poems, pausing for whatever seems attractive. The plays 
you will find disappointing, the work of a man '^^ inapt for 
dramatic poetry." If you read them, it will be largely as 
a study. 

Read, at the same time, if you can, some of the poetry 
of W^ordsworth, — his poems about '^Lucy" ; a little, here 
and there, of the '' Prelude " and the '' Excursion " ; cer- 
tainly the great '' Ode on the Intimations of Immor- 
tality." Remember that he and Coleridge had, with all 
their diiferences, much in common. Read, if you can, a 
little of the work of the others of the group of friends, — | 



INTRODUCTION xxxiii 

Lamb, De Qniiicey, Southey^ Hazlitfc, and Leigli Hunt. 
See what qualities — if any — their work has in common. 
Make, in brief, this poem a centre, a nucleus, for more 
reading. That will give your work system, and help 
you to keep together as a whole your impressions of one 
period of literature. 

VIII. Some Criticisms on" the Poem. ' 

The student will be helped, in forming his opinion of 
the '^ Ancient Mariner,"^ by noticing what famous critics 
have said of it : 

*' It is so well known that it needs no fresh comment. Only I 
will say that it may seem as though this great sea-piece might have 
had more in it of the air and savor of the sea. Perhaps it is none the 
worse, and indeed any one speaking of so great and famous a poem 
must feel and know that it cannot but be right, although he or 
another may think it wouki be better if this were retrenched or that 
appended. And this poem is beyond question one of the supreme 
triumphs of poetry. The 'Ancient Mariner' has doubtless more of 
breadth and space, more of material force and motion, than anything 
else of the poet's. And the tenderness of sentiment which touches 
with significant colour the pure white imagination is here no more 
morbid or languid, as in the earlier poems of feeling and emotion. 
It is soft and piteous enough, but womanly rather than effeminate : 
and thus serves indeed to set off the strange splendours and boundless 
beauties of the story. For the execution, I presume no human eye is 
too dull to see how perfect it is and how high in kind of perfection. 
Here is not the speckless and elaborate finish which shows every- 
where the fresh rasp of file or chisel on its smooth and spruce excel- 
lence : this is faultless after the fashion of a flower or a tree. Thus 
has it grown : not thus has it been carved." — A. C. Swinburne, "Es- 
says and Studies," page 264. 

" Neither the poet himself nor his companions seem to have per- 
ceived the extraordinary superiority of this wonderful conception to 
the other poems with which it was published : for not only was its 
subject more elevated, but it possessed in fact all the completeness 



xxxi V IJS'TRODUCTION 

of execution and faithfulness to its plan which they failed in. While 
Wordsworth represented the light in the landscape chiefly in his 
imitation of the prominence sometimes given by the sunshine to the 
most insignificant spot, Coleridge carried out the similitude on his 
side with a faithfulness of the grandest kind. Like a great shadow 
moving noiselessly over the widest sweep of mountain and plain, a 
pillar of cloud — or like flight of indescribable fleecy hosts of winged 
vapors spreading their impalpable influence like a breath, changing 
the face of the earth, subduing the thoughts of men, yet nothing, and 
capable of no interpretation — such was the great poem destined to 
represent in the w^orld of poetry the effect which these mystic cloud 
agencies have upon the daylight and the sky." — Mrs. Oliphant, 
*' Literary History of England, 1790-1825."* 

"Fancies of the strange things which may very well happen, even in 
broad daylight, to men shut up alone in ships far off on the sea, seem 
to have arisen in the human mind in all ages with a peculiar readi- 
ness, and often have about them the fascination of a certain dreamy 
grace, which distinguishes them from other kinds of marvellous 
inventions. This sort of fascination the ' Ancient Mariner ' brings 
to its highest degree ; -it is the delicacy, the dreamy grace in his pres- 
entation of the marvellous, that makes Coleridge's work so remarka- 
ble. The too palpable intruders from the spirit world, in almost all 
ghost literature, in Scott and Shakespeare even, have a kind of coarse- 
ness or crudeness. Coleridge's power is in the very flneness with 
which, as with some really ghostly finger, he brings home to our in- 
most sense his inventions, daring as they are — the skeleton ship, the 
polar spirit, the inspiriting of the dead bodies of the ship's crew ; the 
' Rime of the Ancient Mariner' has the plausibility, the perfect adap- 
tation to reason and the general aspect of life, which belongs to the 
marvellous when actually presented as part of a credible experience, 
in our dreams." — Walter Pater, in Ward's "English Poets." 



IX. Suggested Subjects for Composition's. 

A. Suggested Subjects for Long Compositions. — 1. The 
story of the poem. 2. Description and discussion of. the 
human characters in the j^oem. 3. The supernatural 

* The student will do well to read all that Mrs. Oliphant has to say in this book 
with regard to Wordsworth and Coleridge. 



INTROD UCTION xxxv 

figures and agencies of the poem. 4. The incident in the 
*^' Ancient Mariner^'' that most moves me. 5. The obvi- 
ous moral of the poem. (See page xxxi.) 6. The presence 
or absence of moral motive in the poem. (See page xxx.) 
7. Why stories of the supernatural sometimes seem true. 
(See page xxxiv.) 8. The lack of human character in the 
poem. (See page XV.) 9. The elements that produce the 
effect of a dream. 10. The poem regarded as a picture 
of the sea. Is it accurate ? Is Mr. Swinburne's criticism 
just ? (See page xxxiii.) 

B. Suggested Subjects for Short Comjjositions. — 1. A 
description of some one scene, — the Death -ship, the Har- 
bor, the Calm. 2. The story of the Albatross, of the re- 
turn to the harbor, of the rising of the dead men. 3. 
A short treatment of one of the topics suggested for long 
compositions. 4. A discussion of the picture suggested 
by some one stanza. 5. A discussion of the form of some 
part of the j^oem. 

These are merely suggestions, a mere beginning of a 
list, to which each teacher may add indefinitely. See, so 
far as possible, that each pupil write on that j)hase of the 
poem that most interests him. 

C. Suggestions for Exam hiatiou. — To some extent build 
questions on the comments in the notes, and on the addi- 
tional comments made in class. Do not ask questions of 
formal detail, — how many fathom deep the spirit slid, 
what the Albatross ate, in what latitude ice occurs, and 
the like. Ask rather questions that wall lead the pupil 
to look into the meaning and into the poetry of the poem. 
The following questions may suggest others : 

1. What happened to the Pilot's Boy? By what sig- 
nificant detail is it described ? 2. Describe Life-in-Death. 
Why is her appearance more horrible than that of Death ? 
3. What is mentioned at the end of every ^'^Part" but the 



xxxvi INTRODUCTION 

last ? 4. Quote some stanza that you remember as par- 
ticularly musical. Explain its form. 5. What are the 
most effective details in the picture of the calm ? 6. 
''^ They stood as signals to the land.'' Who? Describe 
the scene. What comment was made on it in the notes ? 



X, Bibliography. 

The standard edition of Coleridge's Poetical Works is 
that which appeared in 1834, the year of his death. The 
latest reprint, that of B. M. Pickering, 1877, is founded 
on this. There is also an edition by W. M. Eossetti, con- 
taining a reprint of the earliest form of the '' Ancient 
Mariner." 

For biographies, there is the '' Life of Coleridge," by 
James Gillman (1838) ; '^Reminiscences of Coleridge and 
Southey," by Joseph Cottle (1847); a '^ Life of Cole- 
ridge " (in the English Men of Letters Series), by H. D. 
Traill ; a '' Life," in " Lives of Famous Poets," by W. 
M. Rossetti. The new edition of Coleridge's letters 
(Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1895) casts not a little new 
light on his character and on the circumstances of his 
life. There is also much indirect biography contained 
in the writings of his friends and associates, in their 
letters, autobiographies, and reminiscent essays. Con- 
sult, for this, the works of De Quincey, Wordsworth, 
Southey, Lamb, Leigh Hunt, John "Foster, Hazlitt, and, 
later, Carlyle. Good examples of the early reviews will 
be found in the Edinhurgh Revieiu for September, 1816 ; 
in BlachivoocVs Magazine for October, 1819 ; and in the 
North American Review for October, 1834. Later maga- 
zine articles will be found in Blaclciuood's for November, 
1871 ; in the Atlantic Monthly for April, 1880; and in 
the same magazine for September, 1895. 



INTROD UCTION xxx vii 

Helpful essays will be foimd in Edward Dowden's 
''Studies in Literature/^ in J. C. S. Sbairp's ''Studies 
in Philosophy and Poetry/' in Mrs. Oliphant's "Literary 
History of England/' and in A. C. Swinburne's " Essays 
and Studies/' Good, too, especially for older readers, is 
Walter Pater's essay introducing the selections from Cole- 
ridge in Ward's " English Poets/' But it would be 
impossible to state in little space all the books that deal 
with a man whose personality was so essentially inter- 
woven with the literary life of his day. 



1 



XXXVlll 



INTRODUCTION 



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THE 

RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 

IN SEVEN PARTS 

Facile credo, plures esse Naturas invisibiles quam visibiles in 
rerum universitate. Sed horum omnium familiam quis nobis enar- 
raljit, et gradus et cognationes et discrimina et singulorum munera? 
Quid agiint ? quae loca habitant ? Harum renim notitiam semper 
ambivit ingenium humanum, nunquam attigit. Juvat, interea, non 
diffiteor, quandoque in animo, tanquam in tabula, majoris et meli- 
oris mundi imaginem contemplari : ne mens assuefacta hodiernas 
vitas miuutiis se contrahat nimis, et tota subsidat in pusillas cogita- 
tiones. Sed veritati interea invigilandum est, modusque servandus, 
ut certa ab incertis, diem a nocte, distinguamus. 

T. Burnet : Arch^ol. Phil., p. 68. 

Translation.— ^'^ I find it easy to believe that in the universe the visible beings 
are outnumbered by the invisible. But who shall tell us the nature common to 
these, their rank, their kindreds, the signs by which they are distinguished, the 
gifts in which they excel ? What is their task ? Where is their abode ? Close to 
full knowledge of these wonders, the mind of man has ever circled, nor ever attained 
the centre. Meanwhile, I trust, it will give us profit to contemplate in the mind, 
as in a picture, the image of this other world, greater than ours and better, lest 9ur 
minds, becoming wont to the petty details of daily life, be narrowed overmuch, 
and sink to paltry thoughts. We must, meanwhile, keep watch, with vigilance, 
toward truth, preserving temperance of judgment, that we distinguish things certain 
from things uncertain, day from night." 



PAET THE FIRST. 



I. 

An ancient j^ jg ^^^ ancient Mariner, 

Manner meet- ' 

eth three Gal- And lie stoppetli One of three. 

lauts bidden to ■'■■'■ 

S'Jandde- *' ^^ ^^^^ ^^^^^ gi'^j beard and glittering- eye, 
taineth one. Now wlierefore stopjost thou me ? 



11. 

** The Bridegroom's doors are opened wide. 
And I am next of kin ; 
The guests are met, the feast is set : 
Mayst hear the merry din."" 



The glosses — Coleridge's prose comments in the margin — should 
be read carefully, both in connection with the poem, and by them- 
selves. They were added, in Sibylline Leaves, some time after the 
poem was written, in imitation of an old custom. You will find 
them of help in indicating the action of the poem. 

I. It is. A beginning common in tales and old ballads. It — the 
man I am going to tell you about — is. The principal figure is brought 
before us at once. Ancient 3Iariner. Why not old sea-faring man, 
as in the gloss at the side of the page ? What difl'erence is there in 
the suggestion ? From what language is each phrase derived ? One 
of three. Why one of tliree, rather than of four or five ? (See note 
on XIX.) Does the fact that other passers-by are thus mentioned 
add to the mental picture called up by this stanza ? By thy, etc. 
Abrupt, but we guess the speaker. What is gained by indirect 
description — that is, description introduced not formally, but as if 
by accident ? How do you get your impression of the Mariner ? 
What is it ? Why is the Wedding-Guest introduced ? Why does 
not the ]\P^"''"o.- ,^^x ins tale directly to the reader ? Why is glitter- 
ing uetter than shining ov flashing ? 

II. Why are Bridegroom, llariner, etc., capitalized? 3Iayst. 
Notice the form of the verb used, and the effect of impatience pro- 
duced by the omission of the subject. 



THE ANCIENT 3IA1UNER 



III. 

He holds him with his skinny hand, 
'' There was a ship/" quoth he. 
'' Hold off ! unhand me, gray-beard loon ! 
Eftsoons his hand dropt he. 



10 



The Wedding- 
Guest is spell- 
bound by the 
eye of the old 
sea-faring 
man, and con- 
strained to 
hear his tale. 



IV. 

He holds him with his glittering eye- 
The Wedding-Guest stood still, 

And listens like a three years' child : 
The Mariner hath his will. 



15 



V. 



The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone ; 

He cannot choose but hear ; 
And thus spake on that ancient man. 

The bright-eyed ]\rariner. 



20 



III. The Mariner ignores the Guest's protest. He seems not to 
hear it. This increases the uncanny impression. What kind of 
being, we ask, is this, on whom words have no effect ? There ivas a 
ship. The ship, as, later, the Albatross, the calm, and the Death- 
ship, appears suddenly, as things appear in dreams, without expla- 
nation or preparation. We are in a world of wonders. Loon. Com- 
pare Macbeth, "The devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon" 
(Act v., sc. iii., line 2). Eftsoons, immediately, straightway. To 
us the word has a more leisurely suggestion. Dropt. How does this 
verb compare in tense with holds ? What do you observe with re- 
gard to tenses throughout the opening stanzas ; '^'^'U^ is the effect 
of this uncertainty of time ? Observe the spelling. Can you -x.cl 
other words in the poem similarly spelled ? 

V. Does bright, in bright-eyed, suggest glittering ? Is it not, per- 
haps, unfortunately cheerful in suggestion ? 



The Mariner 
tells how the 
ship sailed 
southward 
with a good 
wind and fair 
weather, till 
• it reached the 
Line. 



THE ANCIENT MARINER 

V 

VI. 

^^ The ship was cheered, the harbor cleared. 
Merrily did we drop 
Below the kirk, below the hill. 
Below the lighthouse top. 

/ 

VII. 

'^ The sun came up upon the left, 
Out of the sea came he ! 
And he shone bright, and on the right 
Went down into the sea. 



viir. 

** Higher and higher every day, 
Till over the mast at noon—'' 
The Wedding-G-uest here beat his breast. 
For he heard the loud bassoon. 



25 



30 



VI A moment ago we learned that there was a ship. Suddenly 
we are aboard and under way. Drop. Used in a nautical sense - 
move down the coast. Beloiv the ligldliouse top is, in this con- 
nection, a little confusing. Probably the poet had in mind here the 
related idea of the lighthouse top dropping-vanishing-last oi aU, 
below the horizon. 

VII. Compare the beginning of Tennyson's poem, The Voyage 
Read also, Longfellow's Tlie Discoverer of the North Cape, which 
in a small degree, recalls the manner of this. Observe how quickly 
the story has passed into the open sea, where anything may happen. 

VIII ' ' When the Ancient Mariner [ Was it the Ancient Mariner V] 
thought he heard ' the loud bassoon,' he probably heard nothing o± 
the kind."— F. W. Apthorp, in Boston Symphony Orchestra Pro- 
gramme. Is the criticism true ? If it is, is it important ? 



THE ANCIENT MARINER 



IX. 



The Wedding- 
Guest heareth 
the bridal 
music ; but 
the Mariner 
continueth his 
tale. 



The bride hath paced into the hall, 

Eed as a rose is she ; 
Nodding their heads before her goes 

The merry minstrelsy. 



35 



X. 



The Wedding-Guest he beat his breast. 
Yet he cannot choose but hear ; 

And thus spake on that ancient man, 
The bright-eyed Mariner. 



40 



V 



XL 



The ship 
drawn by a 
storm toward 
the south pole. 



And now the Storm-Blast came, and he 

AVas tyrannous and strong : 
He struck with his overtaking wings, 

And chased us south alono^. 



IX. Their heads . . . goes. Is this violation of the rule of concord 
justifiable? Why? Cf. "But first the nodding minstrels go." 
Coleridge, Ballad of the Dark Ladie. Why is nodding appropriate ? 

X. This stanza is repeated almost verbatim from V. A critic con- 
demns Coleridge for "trying to awaken our feelings by the force of 
verbal iteration." What do you thinlv of the charge ? 



XI. Is the "along" called for by the thought, or by the rhyme, 
or by both ? What figure of speech is used in this stanza ? 



THE ANCIENT MARINER 
Xll. 



7 



The land of 
ice, and of 
fearful 

sounds, where 
no living 
thing was to be 
seen. 



AYitli sloping masts and dipping prow, 
As who pursued with j-ell and blow 

Still treads the shadow of his foe. 
And forward bends his head, 

The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast. 
And southward aye we fled. 

XIII. 

And now there came both mist and snow, 

And it grew wondrous cold : 
And ice, mast-high, came floating by, 

As green as emerald. 

XIV. 

And through the drifts the snowy clif ts 

Did send a dismal sheen : 
Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken — 

The ice was all between. 



45 



50 



55 



XII. If you have ever seen a gale at sea, recall the picture. If not, 
try to find some good picture to help your imagination. Make a 
mental picture of the ship, with sloping masts, etc. Treads the 
shadow. What does this mean ? What does it imply ? How is aye 
to be pronounced in this sense ? See the dictionary. This stanza 
contains six hues. How are they distributed ? See the Introduc- 
tion, III. 

XIII. Suggested, it may be, by Captain James's Strange and 
Dangerous Voyage, published in London, 1633. The book describes 
"Ice as high as our Top-Mast-Head," which had "sharp bhie cor- 
ners," and made " a hollow and a hideous noise." See correspond- 
ence in the Athemmim, 1890. The ice, like the other apparitions, 
comes with no preparation. 

XIV. Drifts. Snowdrifts? Would "clifts"then show through 
them ? Try the word in the sense of driving clouds of mist and 
snow. Clifts. An old form, a confusion, perhaps, of "clifCs" and 
" clefts." Cf. Robinson Crusoe, " cUmbed up the clifts of the shore." 
Sheen. Like the cold light of a snow-storm. Allhetiveen. Between 
what ? How is hetiveen used here ? 



THE ANCIENT 3IARINER 

XV. 

The ice was here, the ice was there, 

Tlie ice was all around : 60 

It cracked and growled, and roared and howled, 

Like noises in a swound ! 



Till a great 
sea-bird, 
called the 
Albatross, 
came through 
the snow-fog, 
and was re- 
ceived with 
great joy and 
hospitality. 



XVL 

At length did cross an Albatross : 
Thorough the fog it came ; 

As if it had been a Christian soul, 
We hailed it in God's name. 

7 

XVII. 

It ate the food it ne'er had eat. 
And round and round it flew. 

The ice did split with a thunder-fit ; 
The helmsman steered us through ! 



65 



70 



XV. Swound. Archaic for " swoon." Like noises that one hears 
when swooning. Try to imagine them. 

XVI. Did cross. Crossed our course. Compare the common 
phrase, "I came across it." Thorough. The old form of *' through" 
is used here for metrical convenience. Why would not "through " 
fit as well ? Realize, as vividly as you can, the delight of these men, 
so long out of sight of land, at meeting a living thing. 

XVII. Had eat. A form of the verb now obsolete and inelegant. 
Thunder-fit. A noise like thunder, *'A burst of thunder-sound." 
Steered us through. Recall the old story of the Argo and the Sym- 
plegades. A dim recollection of it may have been in Coleridge's 
mind. See Murray's 3Ianual of 3Iythology, pp. 273-274. Read 
William Morris's Jason. See, too, Swinburne : 

" When the oars won their way 
Where the narrowing Symplegades whitened the straits of Propontis with spray." 



And lo ! the 
Albatross 
proveth a bird 
of good omen, 
and followeth 
the ship as it 
returned 
northward, 
through fog 
and floating 
ice. 



The ancient 
Mariner 
Inhospitably 
killeth the 
pious bird of 
good omen. 



THE ANCIENT MARINER 

XVIII. 

And a good south wind sprung up behind ; 

The Albatross did follow. 
And every day, for food or play. 

Came to the mariners'' hollo ! 



XIX. 



r 



In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud,"" 75 

It perched for vespers nine ; 
Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white, 

Glimmered the white moon-shine.^' 



T"^^^ 



XX. 

God save thee, ancient Mariner ! 

From the fiends, that plague thee thus ! — 
Why lookst thou so ?" — '^ With my cross-bow 

I shot the Albatross." 



80 



XIX. Shroud. One of the supporting ropes that run from the mast- 
head to the side of the ship. Vespers nine. Vespers suggests the 
religion of the world in the time in which the scene is laid. What 
was it ? Nine. The prevailing numbers in this poem are three, five, 
seven, and nine. The odd numbers have always been regarded as 
particularly appropriate to the mystical or supernatural. See, for 
example, Rossetti's Blessed Damozel : 

"She had three lilies in her hand. 

And the stars in her hair were seven," 

Tennyson writes, in the Hesperides : 

" . . . Five and three, 
Let it not be noised abroad, make an awful mystery." 

There are, you remember, nine muses, seven wonders of the world, 
three fates, etc. 

XX. God save thee ! Why does he say this ? What has happened ? 
Note the abruptness of the answer. It begins in the middle of the 
line. Can you find another line so abruptly broken in the middle ? 
See how this form emphasizes the answer. Cross-how. In what age 
of the world was the cross-bow used? What was it? Each part 
ends with mention of the Albatross. Why ? 



PAET THE SECOND. 



XXL 



" The Sun now rose upon the right : 
Out of the sea came he, 
Still hid in mist, and on the left 85 

Went down into the sea. 

XXII. 

And the good south wind still blew behind. 

But no sweet bird did follow, 
Nor any day, for food or play. 

Came to the mariners' hollo ! 90 

XXIII. 

His ship- And I had done a hellish thing, 

SSrr'* And it would work 'em woe : 

Sti kSnng For all averred, I had killed the bird 
gooSck! That made the breeze to blow. 

^ Ah, wretch ! ' said they, ' the bird to slay, 95 
That made the breeze to blow ! ' 

XXI Varied from XXVII. Why is the change first mentioned 
here ? They had already been sailing north " for vespers nine. 

XXII. Varied from what previous stanza ? 

XXIII 'Em. Would a writer of to-day be likely to use this in a 
serious poem, even if, according to one critic it is "a sign not of 
barbarism, but of a fondness for the choicest of Old English ? 
What contractions are not out of place m poetry ? 



THE ANCIENT MARINER 



11 



But when the 
fog cleared 
off, they jus- 
tify the same, 
and thus make 
themselves 
accomplices 
in the crime. 



The fair breeze 
continues ; the 
ship enters the 
Pacific Ocean 
'and sails north- 
ward, even till 
it reaches the 
Line. 



The ship hath 
been suddenly 
becalmed. • 



XXIV. 

Nor dim nor red, like God's own head. 

The glorious Sun uprist : 
Then all averred, I had killed the bird 

That brought the fog and mist. 100 

^'Twas right/ said they, ' such birds to slay. 

That bring the fog and mist." 

XXV. 

The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, 

The furrow followed free : 
We were the first that ever burst 105 

Into that silent sea. 

XXVI. 

Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down, 

'Twas sad as sad could be ; 
And we did speak only to break 

The silence of the sea ! 110 



XXIV. Pause after red. The phrase Wke GocVs oivn head mod- 
ifies Sun. Read carelessly, the stanza makes nonsense. 

XXV. The original edition reads followed free. Coleridge changed 
it to "streamed off free," observing that, seen from shipboard the 
furrow did not follow, but streamed off. Later, however, he re- 
sumed the first form, for the sake of smoothness of sound ; also, to 
some extent, for the sake of swiftness. Compare the effect of the 
two. Observe that this weighing of forms must be the constant task 
of every conscientious writer. Into that silent sea. The silent sea 
comes as suddenly as the ice and the Albatross. Compare a similar 
phrase in Kubla Khan : 

" Where Alph the sacred river ran 
Through caverns measureless to man, 
Down to a sunless sea." 

XXVI. Note how the speed of line 105 is checked in the halting 
movement of line 107. You can feel the ship stop. Why is it hard 
to read line 107 rapidly ? Why did the writer put such a line here ? 
Why not down dro2it the sails, keeping the same order as the first 
clause ? This stanza ends with the same rhyme-word, sea, as the 
last. Note the dreary effect. 



13 THE ANCIENT MARINER 



XXVII. 

All in a hot and copper sky, 

The bloody Siin^, at noon. 
Eight up above the mast did stand, 

No bigger than the Moon. 

XXVIII. 

Day after day, day after day, 115 

We stuck, nor breath nor motion ; 

As idle as a painted ship 
Upon a painted ocean. 

XXIX. 

And the Ai- Water, water, everywhere, 

to^beaveu^S^ And all the boards did shrink ; 220 

Water, water, everywhere, 
Nor any drop to drink. 

XXX. 

The very deep did rot : Christ ! 

That ever this should be ! 
Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs 125 

Upon the slimy sea. • 

XXVII. All. What does it mean here ? Note the effect of each 
adjective. Is any superfluous ? Why is copper appropriate ? 

XXVIII. Day after day. The repetition suggests the monotony. 
Stuck. Not a pretty word ; but can you find a pretty word that shall 
be as forcible ? 

XXIX. Why could they not drink it ? Why was not the presence 
of the water cooling ? 

XXX. With legs. What kind of slimy things does this suggest ? 
The repetition of slimy adds force. 



THE ANCIENT MARINER 13 



XXXI. 

About, about, in reel and rout 
The death-fires danced at night ; 

The water, like a witches oils. 
Burnt green, and blue, and white. 130 

XXXII. 

A spirit had And some in dreams assured were 
them ; one of Of the Spirit that plagued us so : 

inhabitants of Nine fatliom deep he had followed us 
neith^er^^depart- From the land of mist and snow. 

ed souls nor 

angels ; concerning whom the learned Jew, Josephus, and the Platonic Constantinopolitan, 
Michael Psellus, may be consulted. They are very numerous, and there is no climate 
or element without one or more. 

XXXIII. 

And every tongue, through utter drought, 135 

Was withered at the root ; 
We could not speak, no more than if 

We had been choked with soot. 

XXXI. Rout. See dictionary. Death-fires. Phosphoric lights, 
corpse-candles. Perhaps, too, St. Elmo's fires, the mast-head lights 
that sailors call "corposants.'' Witclvs oils. The use of strange 
fires was a common device of necromancers, 

XXXII. Is the reader really supposed to look up these learned 
authorities mentioned in the gloss ? Can you find any other reason 
for their being mentioned here ? Assured ivere. Learned certainly 
what they had suspected. Perhaps merely "learned." What Latin 
idiom is the phrase a little like ? A fathom is six feet. Here the 
actual depth is of little moment. Nine is chosen merely as a " mys- 
tical " number. The Spirit keeps out of sight. Would it be easy, 
without loss to the effect on our imagination, to make him appear on 
the deck and speak to the Mariner V Read the criticism of Walter 
Pater, on page xxxiv. Plagued. Not used so trivially as by people now. 

XXXIII. The last two lines seem a little prosaic. Why ? Is 
there a double negative in the third line ? Why not ? 



14 



THE ANCIENT MARINER 



XXXIV. 



The ship- 
mates in their 
sore distress 
would fain 
throw the 
whole guilt on 
the ancient 
Mariner : in 
sign whereof 
they hang the 
dead sea-bird 
round his neck. 



All ! well-a-day ! what evil looks 
Had I from old and yonng ! 

Instead of the cross, the Albatross 
About my neck was hung. 



140 



XXXIV. Well-a-day. A mixture of " walaway " (an old exclama- 
tion of distress) and "Woe's the day ! " The Albatross appears 
again at the end of the part. 



PART THE THIRD. 



XXXV. 



The ancient 
Mariner be- 
holdeth a sign 
in the element 
afar off. 



Theee passed a weary time. Each throat 
Was parched, and glazed each eye. 

A weary time ! a weary time ! 145 

How glazed each weary eye ! 

When looking westward, I beheld 
A something in the sky. 



XXXVI. 



At first it seemed a little speck. 
And then it seemed a mist : 

It moved and moved, and took at last 
A certain shape, I wist. 



150 



XXXVII. 



A speck, a mist, a shape, I wist ! 

And still it neared and neared : 
As if it dodged a water-sprite. 

It plunged and tacked and veered. 



155 



XXXV. The indefinite something rouses our curiosity as it did tlie 
Mariner's. 

XXXVI. Iivist. Inserted for meaning, or for rhyme ? 

XXXVII. Water-sprite. This comparison keeps us in touch with 
the supernatural. Tacked. Not to be taken as a nautical term. It 
expresses here merely wayward motion. 



16 



THE ANCIENT MARINER 



XXXVIII. 



At its nearer 
approach, it 
seemeth liim 
to be a ship ; 
and at a dear 
ransom he 
freeth his 
speech from 
the bonds of 
thirst. 



With throats unslaked^ with black lijos baked. 

We could nor laugh nor wail ; 
Through utter drought all dumb we stood ! 
I bit my arm, I sucked the blood, 160 

And cried, A sail ! a sail ! 



XXXIX. 

With throats unslaked, with black lips baked. 

Agape they heard me call : 
A flash of joy. Gramercy ! they for joy did grin. 

And all at once their breath drew in, 165 

As they were drinking all. 



XXXVIII. The extra line adds suspense. See page xxiv. Note 
the effect of the means by which the Mariner found his voice. It 
was not simply " with difficulty." 



XXXIX. Oramercy. Originally ^^ grand merci,'^ great thanks. 
Here merely intensive. For joy did grin. " I took the thought of 
grinning for joy from poor Burnett's remark to me when we had 
climbed to the top of Plinlimmon, and were nearly dead with thirst. 
We could not speak for the constriction till we found a little puddle 
under a stone. He said to me, ' You grinned like an idiot. ' He 
had done the same." — Coleridge, Table-talh. But is not the realism 
a trifle grotesque ? As they ivere driiiMng. Note the appropriate- 



THE ANCIENT MARINER 



17 



XL. 



And horror 
follows. For 
can it be a 
ship that 
comes onward 
without wind 
or tide ? 



See ! see ! (I cried) she tacks no more ! 

Hither to work us weal, — 
Without a breeze, without a tide. 

She steadies with upright keel ! 



170 



XLI. 



The western wave was all a-flame, 
The day was well-nigh done ! 

Almost upon the western wave 
Rested the broad bright Sun ; 

When that strange shape drove suddenly 
Betwixt us and the Sun. 



175 



XL. She steadies. Used chiefly of vessels. Are the last two 
lines of the stanza as joyful as the first ? Is there not dread mixed 
with them ? Compare Longfellow's Phantom Ship : 

" On she came with a crowd of canvas. 
Eight against the wind that blew. 
Until the eye could distinguish 
The faces of her crew." 

The '* Flying Dutchman" always came, as in the old ballad, "to 
windward." The first steamships terrified ignorant sailors by doing 
the same thing. Compare Longfellow's Ballad of Carmilhan : 

" A ghostly ship, with a ghostly crew. 
In tempests she appears ; 
And before the gale, or against the gale. 
She sails without a rag of sail, 
Without a helmsman steers.'" 

The whole poem, in many ways, will recall the Ancient Mariner. 

XLI. With this comes certainty of the supernatural. The sail 
becomes that strange shape. (One editor reads ''ship.") Observe 
the repetition of the rhyme-word Sun. Compare Poe's Atmabel 

Lee : 

" In her sepulchre there by the sea. 
In her tomb by the sounding sea.'' 



Broad. What does this imply ? 
an enlarged circle ? 
2 



Is the sun elongated, or simply 



18 



THE* ANCIENT MARINER 



XLII. 



It seemeth 
him but the 
skeleton of a 
ship. 



And straight the Sun was flecked with bars, 

(Heaven^s Mother send us grace !) 
As if through a dungeon-grate he peered. 



With broad and burning face. 



180 



XLIII. 

Alas ! (thought I, and my heart beat loud,) 

How fast she nears and nears ! 
Are those lier sails that glance in the Sun, 

Like restless gossameres ? 



XLIV. 



And its ribs 
are seen as 
bars on the 
face of the set- 
ting Sun. 
The Spectre- 
Woman and her 
Death-mate, 
and no other on 
board the skel- 
eton-ship. 



Are those lier ribs through which the Sun 
Did peer as through a grate ? 

And is that Woman all her crew ? 

Is that a Death ? and are there two ? 
Is Death that Woman^s mate ? 



185 



XLII. Heaven's Mother, 
feelings joyful now ? 



See note on stanza XIX. Were his 



XLIII. Is he glad that she is nearing fast ? Why is lier italicized ? 
Read the line aloud. Why is Woman capitalized ? Why a Death 9 
Why not simply Death ? 



TEE ANCIENT MARINER 



19 



Like vessel, 
like crew I 



XLV. 

Her lips were red, lier looks were free, 

Her locks were yellow as gold : 
Her skin was as white as leprosy. 
The Night-mare Life-in-Death was she. 
Who thicks man's blood with cold. 



190 



Death and 
Life-in- 
Death have 
diced for the 
ship's crew, 
and she (the 
latter) wiuneth 
the ancient 
Mariner. 



No twilight 
within the 
courts of the 
Sun. 



XLVI. 

The naked hulk alongside came, 195 

And the twain were casting dice ; 
^ The game is done ! IVe won, Fve won ! ' 
Quoth she, and whistles thrice. 

XLVII. 

The Sun's rim dips ; the stars rush out : 

At one stride comes the dark ; 200 

"With far-heard whisper, o'er the sea. 
Off shot the spectre-bark. 



XLV. Why is Death not described as well as Life-in-Death ? Red 
lips and golden hair are certainly not in themselves repelling. It is 
only when we join to them shin as white as leprosy that the picture 
becomes horriJ3le, — the more horrible for the contrast. Have these 
contradictory details any fitness to the character ? Think of her 



XLVL Naked even of planking, since the ribs show. Why does 
she whistle ? Why thrice ? See note on XIX. Originally another 
stanza followed this : 

" A gust of winde sterte up behind, 
And whistled through his bones ; 
Through the holes of his eyes and the hole of his mouth, 
Half whistles and half groans." 
What reason can you see for omitting it ? 

XLVII. Note the rapidity of the scene. To what words is it chiefly 
due ? What would cause the "whisper " ? Observe the very poeti- 
cal form of the gloss. What is meant by it ? Where are the 
" courts of the sun " ? 



20 



THE ANCIENT 3IARINER 



XLVIII. 



At the rising 
of the Moon, 



We listened and looked sideways up ! 
Fear at my heart, as at a cup, 

My life-blood seemed to sip ! 205 

The stars were dim, and thick the night. 
The steersman's face by his lamp gleamed white ; 

From the sails the dew did drip — 
Till clomb above the eastern bar 
The horned Moon, with one bright star 210 

Within the nether tip. 



XLIX. 



One after 
another, 



One after one, by the star-dogged Moon, 

Too quick for groan or sigh, 
Each turned his face with a ghastly pang. 

And cursed me with his eye. 215 



XLVIII. Looked sideways up. Why not directly up or down ? 
What does the position imply ? Observe the fitness of the compar- 
ison. Recall some time Avhen you have been afraid. His lamp. In 
front of the steersman a small, partly covered lamp illuminates the 
compass. The light reflected on the steersman's face would have 
a ghastly effect. The deiv did drip. Suggestive of what kind of 
weather ? of wind ? Clomb. Would you use this in prose ? Ten- 
nyson writes: 

" And dewed with showery droDS 
Up'Clomb the shadowy pine above the woven copse." —Lotos- Eaters. 

Bar, edge of the sea. Often it shows, at moonrise, as a bright bar. 
Horned, two syllables. Withiri. Was it actually within ? Could 
it have been ? Observe the form of the stanza. See the Introduc- 
tion, p. xxiv. 



XLIX. *' It is a common superstition among sailors that something 
is going to happen when stars dog the moon." — Coleridge. 



TEE ANCIENT MARINER 



%l 



L. 



His shipmates 
drop down 
dead. 



Four times fifty living men, 

(And I heard nor sigh nor groan) 

With heavy tliump^ a lifeless lump. 
They dropped down one by one. 



LI. 



But Life-in- 

Death be- 
gins her work 
on the ancient 
Mariner. 



The souls did from their bodies fly, — 

They fled to bliss or woe ! 
And every soul^ it passed me by, 

Like the whizz of my cross-bow ! " 



220 



L. Thump, lump. This rhyme sounds, to the modern ear, un- 
dignified. Perhaps this is because so many undignified words — 
" bump," " dump," " hump," etc. — end in this way. But the sound 
seems to have had more- dignity. In an old ballad we are told quite 
seriously of a man who was " in doleful dumps." 



LI. And every soul. Compare the last lines of E-ossetti's Sister 



" Ah ! what white thing at the door has crossed, 
Sister Helen ? 
Ah ! what is this that sighs in the frost ? " 
" A soul that's lost as mine is lost, 
Little brother ! " 
{Oh Mother, Mary Mother, 
Lost, lost, all lost between Hell and Heaven!) 

The last lines of this part carry us back to the Albatross. 



PART THE FOURTH. 



LII. 



The Wedding- <( I fear thee, ancient Mariner ! 

Guest feareth ^ 

that a Spirit is I fear tliv skinnv hand ! 

talking to him; *' '' 

And thou art long, and lank, and brown, 
As is the ribbed sea-sand. 



225 



LIII. 



But the an- 
cient Mariner 
assureth him 
of his bodily* 
life, and pro- 
ceedeth to re- 
late his horri- 
ble penance. 



I fear thee, and thy glittering eye. 
And thy skinny hand, so brown/' — 

Fear not, fear not, thou Wedding- Guest ! 230 

This body dropt not down. 

LIV. 

Alone, alone, all, all alone. 

Alone on a wide, wide sea ! 
And never a saint took pity on 

My soul in agony. 235 



LII. The fear is explained in the gloss. Read LII. in close con- 
nection with what precedes. Lines three and four were composed 
by Wordsworth. Do they join on smoothly, or can you detect the 
patch ? Rihhed. Sea-sand, at low tide, is marked by ripples, left 
by the receding waves. 

LIV. Note the repeated alo7ie, with its long vowel. See above, in 
the quotation from Rossetti, a similar repetition of " lost." Never a 
saint. Why never instead of " not " 9 Is there a difference in force ? 
In what churches are saints prayed to ? 



THE ANCIENT MARINER 



23 



LV. 

The many men, so beautiful ! 

And they all dead did lie : 
And a thousand thousand slimy things 

Lived on ; and so did I. 



LVI. 



I looked upon the rotting sea. 
And drew my eyes away : 

I looked upon the rotting deck. 
And there the dead men lay. 



240 



LVIL 

I looked to Heaven and tried to pray ; 

But or ever a prayer had gusht, 
A wicked whisper came, and made 

My heart as dry as dust. 



245 



LV. So heautiful In themselves ? Lamb— in a perverse mood- 
suggested that they were "Vagabonds,, all covered with pitch." 
But what does Coleridge mean ? Does he not mean beautiful as 
higher works of God, beautiful in comparison with the "slimy 
things" that hved on ? The Mariner's cure was not yet complete. 
He could not yet love and admire all that God had made. 

LVI. Rotting. Recall, if you have ever seen one, a pool of stag- 
nant salt water. What do you observe in the form and sound of 
lines one and three ? 

LVII. What is the lieart compared to ? Is gusht and dust a good 
rhyme ? How would you spell gusht 9 



24 TEE ANCIENT MARINER 



LVIII. 



I closed my lids, and kept them close, 

And the balls like pulses beat ; 
For the sky and the sea, and the sea and the 

sky 250 

Lay like a load on my weary eye. 

And the dead were at my feet. 



LIX. 

But the curse The cold sweat melted from their limbs, 

liveth for him i t t j i 

in the eye of j\ or rot nor reek did they : 

The look with which they looked on me 255 

Had never passed away. 



LX. 



An orphan's curse would drag to Hell 

A spirit from on high ; 
But oh ! more horrible than that 

Is a curse in a dead man's eye ! 260 

Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse. 

And yet I could not die. 



LVIII. Notice the anapestic third line. What alliteration do you 
observe ? 

LIX. Reeh. See the dictionary. This is the first stage of the 
punishment ; the beginning of Life-in-Death. 

LX. Seven. See note on stanza XIX. 



THE ANCIENT MARINER 



/iO 



LXL 



In his loneli- 
ness and lixed- 
ness he jearn- 
eth towards 
the journeying 
Moon, and the 
stars that still 



The moving Moon went up the sky. 
And nowhere did abide : 

Softly she was going up, 
And a star or two beside — 



265 



LXIL 



Her beams bemocked the sultry main. 

Like April hoar-frost spread ; 
But where the ship^s huge shadow lay. 
The charmed water burnt alway 
A still and awful red. 



60joarn,yetstill 
move onward ; 
and everyw here 
the blue sky be- 
lonjis to them, 
and is their ap- 
pointed rest, 
and their native 
country and 
their own nat- 
ural homes, which they enter unannounced, as lords that are certainly expected and yet 
there is a silent joy at their arrival. 



270 



LXIII. 



By the light of 
the ;Moon he 
beholdeth 
God's crea- 
tures of the 
great calm. 



Beyond the shadow of the ship, 
I watched the water-snakes : 
They moved in tracks of shining white. 
And when they reared, the elfish light 
Fell off in hoary flakes. 



275 



LXI. Read the gloss aloud. What poetical thought is in it that is 
not in the text ? While it is prose in form, it is in substance as 
poetical as any part of the poem. 

LXII. Written continuously with LXL, yet with an independent 
rhyme system, 

LXIII. Elfish, a word of indefinite supernatural suggestion. 

" Hark, 'tis an elfin storm from faery land, 

Of haggard seeming."— Keats, Eve of St. Agnes, 



26 



THE ANCIENT JIAIUNEB 



LXIV. 



AVithin the shadow of the ship 

I watched their rich attire : 
Blue, glossy green, aud velvet black. 
They coiled and swam ; and every track 

Was a flash of golden fire. 



280 



LXV. 



Their beauty 
and their 
happiness. 



He blesseth 
them in his 
heart. 



happy living things ! no tongue 
Their beauty might declare : 

A spring of love gushed from my heart, 
And I blessed them unaware ! 

Sure my kind saint took pity on me, 

; And I blessed them unaware ! 



285 



LXVI. 



The spell be- 
gins to break. 



The selfsame moment I could pray ; 

And from my neck so free 
The Albatross fell off, and sank 

Like lead into the sea. 



290 



LXIV. Their color appears more clearly in the still and awful red 
of tlie ship's shadow. Eecall, if you have seen it, the phosphorescence 
of sea-water. 

LXV. They are no longer slimy things ; they, too, are beautiful. 
The Mariner's perception of this removes, or begins to remove, the 
curse. Compare, for form, stanzas XXITL, XXIV., and XLI. 

LXVL What does so free modify? AThatross or neck? What 
scene in Pilgrim^ s Progress does this recall ? The Albatross carries 
the weight of offence with it. The story is, for the instant, allegor- 
ical. 



PART THE FIFTH. 



LXVIL 

Oh sleep ! it is a gentle thing, 

Beloved from pole to pole ! 
To Mary Queen the praise be given ! 
She sent the gentle sleep from Heaven, 295 

That slid into my soul. 

LXVIII. 

By^^aceof The silly buckets on the deck, 

Mother the That had so long remained, 

ancient Man- ^ 

ner is refreshed I dreamt that they were filled with dew ; 

with ram. "^ . . ' 

And vvlien I awoke, it rained. 300 

LXIX. 

My lips were wet, my throat was cold. 

My garments all were dank ; 
Sure I had drunken in my dreams. 

And still my body drank. 

LXVII. Sleep. Sleep is much praised by poets. See Macbeth, II., 
ii., 7; the second part of King Henry IV., i., 5-31 ; also Keats, 
Endymion, Book i., line 453, and what immediately follows. See, 
too, the sonnet by Sir Philip Sidney, beginning : 

" Come, Sleep ! O Sleep, the certain knot of peace. 
The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe." 

Probably you can recall other passages. 31ary Queen. See stanza 
XIX. Slid. Why more appropriate than "came" ? 

LXVIII. Silly. The word first meant blessed, then innocent, then 
simple ; finally, foolishly simple. Here, empty, useless. Why is 
their uselessness here significant ? 

LXIX. Sure. This same form occurred in the same construction 
in stanza LXV. Would you use it in that way now ? 



28 



THE ANCIENT MARINER 



LXX. 

I moved, and could not feel my limbs 

I Avas so light — almost 
I thought that I had died in sleep. 

And was a blessed ghost. 



305 



LXXI. 



^nd soon I heard a roaring wind : 
It did not come anear ; 



He heareth 

sounds, and 

seeth strange 

sights and • i • t • i -i i 

commotions in But With its SOUUd it sllOOK the SailS, 

the sky and 

the element. That Were SO thin and sere. 



310 



LXXII. 



The upper air burst into life ! 

And a hundred fire-flags sheen, 
To and fro they were hurried about; 
And to and fro, and in and out, 

The wan stars danced between. 



315 



LXX. So light. Remember how you have felt after a long illness. 
Almost modifies thought. Pause after light. A blessed ghost, as 
opposed to a lost, damned ghost ; or a blessed ghost, as opposed to a 
very miserable living man. 

LXXI. Anear. What is the modern form ? Sere. Usually ap- 
plied to what ? What imphed comparison? What is the meaning 
of element in the gloss ? See dictionary. Cf. gloss on XXXIL 

LXXII. Examine the construction of the second line. Fire-flags 
is the subject. The sentence is pleonastic in form. Sheen is an 
adjective modifying flags. We have had it before as a noun. See 
XIV. What lights, sometimes seen in the sky, might be called fire- 
flags f In what quarter of the heavens do they appear ? 



THE ANCIENT MARINER 29 



LXXIII. 

And the coming wind did roar more loud, 
And the sails did sigh like sedge ; 

And the rain poured down from one black 

cloud ; 320 

The Moon was at its edge. 

LXXIV. 

The thick black cloud was cleft, and still 

The Moon was at its side : 
Like waters shot from some high crag, 
The lightning fell with never a jag, 325 

A river steep and wide. 

LXXV. 

The b9dies of The loud wiud ucver reached the ship, 

crew are in- Yct UOW the sllip mOVCd OU ! 

the ship moves Beneath the lightning and the Moon 



on 



The dead men gave a groan. 330 

LXXVI. 

They groaned, they stirred, they all uprose, 
Nor spake, nor moved their eyes ; 

It had been strange, even in a dream. 
To have seen those dead men rise. 

LXXIII. Sedge. The figure is faint to us, since the word is strange. 
Recall the sound of the wind in rushes, tall grass, or corn. 

LXXIV. Pause till you see the picture definitely. 

LXXV. Suppose the wind had reached the ship — would the story 
have been so effective ? 

LXXVI. Had. What mood ? How used ? To have seen. Should 
not this be, properly, " to see " ? 



30 



THE ANCIENT MARINER 



LXXYII. 

The helmsman steered, the ship moved on ; 335 

Yet never a breeze up-blew ; 
The mariners all ^gan work the ropes. 

Where they were wont to do : 
They raised their limbs like lifeless tools — 

We were a ghastly crew. 340 



But not by 

the souls of 
the men, nor 
by demons of 
earth or mid- 
dle air, but by 
a blessed troop 
of angelic 
spirits, sent 
down by the 
invocation of 
the guardian 
saint. 



LXXVIIL 

The body of my bro therms son 

Stood by me, knee to knee : 
The body and I pulled at one rope. 

But he said naught to me/' 

LXXIX. 

I fear thee, ancient Mariner ! " 345 

'^ Be calm, thou Wedding-Guest ! 
'Twas not those souls that fled in pain, 
AVhich to their corses came again. 
But a troop of spirits blest : 

LXXX. 

For when it dawned — they dropped their 

arms, 350 

And clustered round the mast ; 
Sweet sounds rose slowly through their mouths. 

And from their bodies passed. 



LXXVIIL The body . . . he. Incongruous. But can you change 
he to it 9 
LXXIX. What previous stanza does this recall ? 
LXXX. What, in the description, hints that not the bodies, but the 

spirits, sing ? 



^ THE ANCIENT 3IARINER 31 

LXXXI. 

Around, around, flew each sweet sound. 

Then darted to the Sun ; 355 

Slowly the sounds came back again, 
Now mixed, now one by one. 

LXXXI [. 

Sometimes a-dropping from the sky 

I heard the sky-lark sing ; 
Sometimes all little birds that are, 360 

How they seemed to fill the sea and air 

With their sweet jargoning ! 

LXXXIIL 

And now 'twas like all instruments, 

Now like a lonely flute ; 
And now it is an angeFs song, 365 

That makes the heavens be mute. 

LXXXIV. 

It ceased ; yet still tlie sails made on 

A pleasant noise till noon, 
A noise like of a hidden brook 

lu the leafy month of June, 370 

That to the sleeping woods all night 

Singeth a quiet tune. 

LXXXIT. A-dropping. A is the old **on," — in the act t>f drop- 
ping. Compare " a-fishing." Sky-lark, An American bird ? Road 
Wordsworth's Ode to a Skylark, and Shelley's. Which do you pre- 
fer ? Jargoning. The confused sound of a flock of birds. 

LXXXIIL Note the music in this and the following stanzas. Ob- 
serve the alliteration in like, lonely, makes, mute, noise, noon, sleep)- 
ing, singeth. Would you use "be" in this way in prose ? 

LXXXIV. Why in June rather than in December ? Why at night, 
in sleeping woods ? How does all this detail help ? Like of. Explain. 



32 



THE ANCIENT MARINER 



LXXXV. 

Till noou we quietly sailed on, 
Yet never a breeze did breathe : 

Slowly and smoothly went the ship. 
Moved onward from beneath. 



375 



The lonesome 
Spirit from the 
60uth-pole 
carries on tlie 
ship as far as 
the Line, in 
obedience to 
the angelic 
troop, but 
still requireth 
vengeance. 



LXXXVI. 

Under the keel nine fathom deep, 
From the land of mist and snow. 

The Spirit slid : and it was he 
That made the ship to go. 

The sails at noon left off their tune 
And the ship stood still also. 



380 



LXXXVII. 

The Sun, right up above the mast. 

Had fixed her to the ocean : 
But in a. minute she ^gan stir. 

With a short uneasy motion — 
Backwards and forwards half her length 

With a short uneasy motion. 



385 



LXXXV. Note the alliteration. 

LXXXVI. Repeated, in part, from what stanza ? Slid. Why is 
this better than ivent, followed, or some such word ? Here there is 
an inconsistency. The gloss to stanza XXV. says : " The ship sails 
northward, even till it reaches the Line." Here the Spirit carries 
the ship as far as the Line. How can he, if it be already there ? 
Either the poet forgot the former stanza, or felt that poetic geog- 
raphy may take licenses. 

LXXXVH. What peculiarity of the stanza suggests the uneasy 
motion ? 



THE ANCIENT MARINER 



33 



LXXXVIII. 

Then like a pawing horse let go. 
She made a sudden bound ; 

It flung the blood into my head. 
And I fell down in a swound. 



390 



LXXXIX. 

How long in that same fit I lay, 

I have not to declare ; 
But ere my living life returned, 
I heard and in my soul discerned 

Two voices in the air. 



395 



The Polar 
Spirifs fel- 
low-demons, 
the invisible 
inhabitants of 
the element, 
take part in 
his wrong ; 
and two of 
them relate, 
one to the 
other, that 
penance long 
and heavy for 
the ancient 
Mariner hath 
been accorded 
to the Polar 
Spirit, who 
returneth 
southward. 



xc. 

Is it he ?' quoth one, ' Is this the man ? 

By him who died on cross. 
With his cruel bow he laid full low, 400 

The harmless Albatross. 



XCI. 

The spirit who bideth by himself 

In the land of mist and snow, 
He loved the bird that loved the man 

Who shot him with his bow.' 405 



LXXXVIII. Sivound. Met once before. Where ? 

LXXXIX. Have not to. Cannot. Living life. Is living super- 
fluous ? Is there, in this poem, life not living V Discerned.- Spirit 
voices are perceptible to the spirit as well as to ears of flesh. 

XCI. Note the musical reiteration of loved. 

3 



34 THE ANCIENT 3IARINEB 

XCII. 

The other was a softer voice. 

As soft as honej-dew : 
Quoth he, ' The man hath penance done. 

And penance more will do/ 



XCII. Honey-deiv. Just what is honey-deiv 9 See dictionary. 
Did the poet care just what it meant, in this case, or did he choose 
the words lioney and dew for their suggestion of dropping sweetness ? 
Will do. Observe that it is not shall do. The speaker merely knows 
of the punishment. A higher power inflicts it. 



PART THE SIXTH. 



XCIII. 



FIRST VOICE. 



But tell me, tell me ! speak again, 410 

Thy soft response renewing — 
What makes that ship drive on so fast ? 

What is the Ocean doing ? ' 



XCIV. 

SECOND VOICE. 

* Still as a slave before his lord, 

The Ocean hath no blast. 415 

His great bright eye most silently 
Up to the Moon is cast — 

XCIV. SHU, etc. Coleridge borrows from his own play Osorio : 

"O woman, 
I have stood silent as a slave before thee." 

Oreat eye. Here he perhaps recalls a stanza by Sir John Davies : 

" For lo the Sea that fleets about the land, 
And like a girdle clips her solid waist, 
Music and measure both doth understand ; 
For his great crystal eye is ever cast 
Up to the Moon and on her lixed fast." 

— Orchestra, a Poeme of Bauncing. 

Compare Keats : 

" O Moon, far-spooming Ocean bows to thee.'"— En dytvion. 



36 



THE ANCIENT MARINER 



XCV. 



If he may know which way to go ; 

For she guides him smooth or grim. 
See, brother, see ! how graciously 

She looketh down on him/ 



420 



XCVI. 



The Mariner 
hath been cast 
into a trance ; 
for the angelic 
power causeth 
the vessel to 
drive north- 
ward faster 
than human 
life could 
eiadure. 



FIRST VOICE. 

But why drives on that ship so fast. 
Without or wave or wind ? ' 

SECOi^^D VOICE. 

The air is cut away before. 
And closes from behind. 



425 



XCVII. 

Fly, brother, fly ! more high, more high ! 

Or we shall be belated : 
For slow and slow that ship will go. 

When the Mariner's trance is abated.' 

XCVIII. 



The supernat- 
ural motion is 
retarded ; the 
Mariner 
awakes, and 
his penance 
begins anew. 



I woke, and we were sailing on 430 

As in a gentle weather : 
'Twas night, calm night, the Moon was high ; 

The dead men stood together. 



XCVI. Or. What would this be in prose ? 

XCVII. Slow and slow. How different in effect from "slower 
and slower " ? Abated. Not ordinarily applied to so passive a 
state. 

XCVIII. A weather. W\\y a 9 



THE ANCIENT MARINER 37 

XCIX. 

All stood together on the deck. 

For a charnel-dimgeon fitter : 435 

All fixed on me their stony eyes 

That in the Moon did glitter. 



The pang, the curse, with which they died. 

Had never passed away : 
I could not draw my eyes from theirs, 440 

Nor turn them up to pray. 



CI. 



And now this spell was snapt : once more 

I viewed the ocean green. 
And looked far forth, yet little saw 

Of what had else been seen — 445 



CIL 

Like one that on a lonesome road 

Doth walk in fear and dread, 
And having once turned round, walks on. 

And turns no more his head ; 
Because he knows a frightful fiend 450 

Doth close behind him tread. 

XCIX. Charnel-dungeon. See dictionary. 

CI. Green. Is the ocean actually green by moonlight ? 



38 



THE ANCIENT MARINER 



cm. 

But soon there breathed a wind on me, 

Nor sound nor motion made : 
Its path was not upon the sea, 

In ripple or in shade. 455 

CIV. 

It raised my hair, it fanned my cheek 

Like a meadow-gale of spring — 
It mingled strangely with my fears. 

Yet it felt like a welcoming. 

CV. 

Swiftly, swiftly flew the ship, 460 

Yet she sailed softly too : 
Sweetly, sweetly blew the breeze — 

On me alone it blew. 



And the an- 
cient Mariner 
beholdetli his 
native 
country. 



CVI. 

Oh ! dream of joy ! is this indeed 
The light-house top I see ? 

Is this the hill ? is this the kirk ? 
Is this mine own countree ? 



4G5 



ClII. Visible either by a ripple or by a belt of darker water. But is 
breeze on moonlit water dark ? 

CIV. Oale. In what sense? Welcomi7ig. ''Welcoming'." Note 
the secondary stress, thrown by the metre on the last syllable. It is 
not so strong as the primary. Cf. mariner, stanza I. 
CV. Note parallel form of lines 1 and 3. 

CVI. The landmarks reappear in reversed order. They come 
without warning. Observe the miraculous swiftness of the journey. 
In what gloss is comment made on it ? Countree. A ballad form. 
Compare the ballad of Thomas the Rhymer : 

" And the}^ waded throngh blude aboon the knee, 
For a' the blade that's shed on earth 
Rins through the springs o' that countrie." 
" Own country " and " ain country " are common in verse. 



THE ANCIENT MARINER 



39 



CVII. 

We drifted o'er the harbor-bar, 
And I with sobs did pray— 

- let me be awake, my God ! 
Or let me sleep alway/ 



470 



CVllI. 

The harbor-bay was clear as glass. 
So smoothly it was strewn ! 

And on the bay the moonlight lay. 
And the shadow of the Moon. 



475 



CIX. 

The rock shone bright, the kirk no less, 
That stands above the rock : 

The moonlight steeped in silentness 
The steady weathercock. 



ex. 

And the bay was white with silent light, 480 

Till rising from the same, 
Full many shapes, that shadows were. 

In crimson colors came. 

CVII. let, etc. " Let this prove real. If it be dream, let me 
dream forever." 

CVIII. Strewn. Spread evenly with level light. Observe how 
melodiously the sound of moon is anticipated in moonlight. Shadow. 
Reflected image. 

CIX. What does steady imply here ? Observe the alliteration : 
stands, steeped, steady. 

ex. His back is turned to the deck. He sees the reflected images 
first. 



40 THE ANCIENT MARINER 



CXI. 

And appear A little distance from the prow 

in their own r,,, • i t >io^ 

forms of light. Tliose crimsoii shadows were : 4bo 

I turned my eyes upon the deck — 

Oh, Christ ! what saw I there ! 



CXII. 

Each corse lay flat, lifeless and flat, 

And, by the holy rood ! 
A man all light, a seraph-man, 490 

On every corse there stood. 

CXIII. 

This seraph-band, each waved his hand : 

It was a heavenly sight ! 
They stood as signals to the land, 

Each one a lovely light : 495 

CXIV. 

This seraph-band, each waved his hand, 

No voice did they impart — 
No voice ; but oh ! the silence sank 

Like music on my heart. 

CXII. Rood. Cross. Compare the term rood-screen, used of the 
cross-bearing screen in many Anglican and Catholic churches. 
Seraph-man. Compare Milton's 

" The helmed cherubim, 
And sworded seraphim, 
Are seen in glittering ranks with wings displayed." 

—Hymn on the Nativity. 

CXIII. Signals. Vessels at night summon a pilot by a flare, a 
flame blazing from the deck, lighting spars and sails. Perhaps such 
a sight suggested to Coleridge this picture. 

CXIV. ImiKirt. An odd use of the word. 



THE ANCIENT MARINER 41 

cxv. 

But soon I heard the dash of oars, 500 

I heard the Pilot's cheer ; 
My head was turned perforce away. 

And I saw a boat appear. 



CXVI. 

The Pilot, and the Pilot's boy, 

I heard them coming fast : 605 

Dear Lord in Heaven ! it was a joy 

The dead men could not blast. 



OXVII. 

I saw a third — I heard his voice : 

It is the Hermit good ! 
He singeth loud his godly hymns 510 

That he makes in the wood. 
He'll shrieve my soul, he'll wash away 

The Albatross's blood. 

CXV. Cheer. In what sense ? 

CXVI. A joy the dead, etc. Insert that. A joy that the presence 
of the dead could not overcome. 

CXVII. Why is the Hermit introduced ? Shrieve. See dic- 
tionary. 



the wood 



PART THE SEVENTH. 



CXVIIL 



The Hermit of This Hermit good lives in that wood 



Whicli slopes down to the sea : 515 

How loudly his sweet voice he rears ! 
He loves to talk with marineres 

That come from a far countree. 



CXIX. 

He kneels at morn^, and noon, and eve — 

He hath a cushion plump : 520 

It is the moss that wholly hides 
The rotted old oak-stump. 



cxx. 

The skiff-boat neared : I heard them talk, 

'Why this is strange, I trow ! 
Where are those lights so many and fair, 525 
That signal made but now V 

CXVIII. Why seven parts ? See note on XIX. 

CXIX. How does this help the story ? Would a priest from the 
town have done as well ? 

CXX. SMff-loat. With us, the first part of the word would be 
enough. Trow. See dictionary. 



THE ANCIENT 3IARINEE 43 

CXXI. 

' strange, by my faith ! ' the Hermit said — 

^And they answered not our cheer ! 
The planks look warped I and see those sails 

How thin the}^ are and sere ! 530 

I never saw aught like to them. 
Unless perchance it were 

CXXII. 

Brown skeletons of leaves that lag 

My forest-brook along ; 
When the ivy-tod is heavy with snow, 535 

And the owlet whoops to the wolf below 

That eats the she-wolf's young/ 

CXXIII. 

' Dear Lord I it hath a fiendish look ' — 

(The Pilot made reply) 
' I am a-f eared' — ' Push on, push on ! ' 540 

Said the Hermit cheerily. 

OXXIV. 

The boat came closer to the ship. 

But I nor spake nor stirred ; 
The boat came close beneath the ship. 

And straight a sound was heard. 545 

CXXI. Is sere and were a perfect rhyme ? Note how the construc- 
tion of the stanza runs over to the next. 

CXXII. Tod. Bush. The description seems a little dispropor- 
tionate. Does it add to our idea of leayes, or of sails ? 

CXXIII. A-f eared. Cf. ''a-thirst," " an-hungered," 

CXXIV. and CXXV. Note the approach of the sound. Would a 
sudden burst, a thunder-fit, have been so effective ? How does the 
sinking of the ship aid the plan of the story ? 



44 



THE ANCIENT MARINER 



The ship sud- 
denly sinketh. 



cxxv. 

Under the water it rumbled on. 
Still louder and more dread : 

It reached the ship, it split the bay ; 
The ship went down like lead. 



The ancient 
Mariner is 
saved in the 
Pilot's boat. 



CXXVI. 

stunned by that loud and dreadful sound, 550 

Which sky and ocean smote. 
Like one that hath been seven days drowned 

My body lay afloat ; 
But swift as dreams, myself I found 

Within the Pilot's boat. 555 



CXXVII. 

Upon the whirl, where sank the ship. 
The boat spun round and round : 

And all was still, save that the hill 
Was telling of the sound. 



CXXVIII. 

I moved my lips— the Pilot shrieked 

And fell down in a fit ; 
The Holy Hermit raised his eyes 

And prayed where he did sit. 



560 



CXXVI. Seven. See note to XIX. As dreams. See note to III. 

CXXVII. Note how the splitting of the bay and the dreadful 
sound are reenforced by the mention of the whirl and the echo. Were 
these omitted, the scene would lose much. 

CXXVIII. Why is the moving of his lips worse to them than his 
silence ? 



THE ANCIENT MARINER 



45 



CXXIX. 

I took the oars : the Pilot's boy, 

Who now doth crazy go. 
Laughed loud and long, and all the while 

His eyes went to and fro. 
Ha ! ha ! ' quoth he, ' full plain I see, 

The Devil knows how to row/ 



565 



CXXX. 

And now, all in my own countree, 

I stood on the firm land ! 
The Hermit stepped forth from the boat. 

And scarcely he could stand. 



570 



CXXXI. 

shrieve me, shrieve me, holy man ! 

The Hermit crossed his brow. 
Say quick,' quoth he, ' I bid thee say- 

What manner of man art thou ?* 



575 



CXXXII. 

Forthwith this frame of mine was wrenched 

AVith a woful agony. 
Which forced me to begin my tale ; 580 

And then it left me free. 



CXXIX. Dotli go. " Go crazy " is common. Here " go " is used 
a little more nearly in the sense of " be." If line two were omitted, 
line four would suggest his madness. 

CXXXI. Note the Biblical effect of the last line. To what words 
is it due ? 



46 



THE ANCIENT MARINER 



CXXXIII. 



And ever and 
anon through- 
out his future 
life an agony 
constraineth 
him to travel 
from land to 
land. 



Since then, at an uncertain hour. 

That agony returns ; 
And till my ghastly tale is told. 

This heart within me burns. 



585 



CXXXIV. 



I pass, like night, from land to land ; 

I have strange power of speech ; 
That moment that his face I see, 
I know the man that must hear me : 

To him my tale I teach. 



590 



cxxxv. 



What loud uproar bursts from that door ! 

The wedding-guests are there : 
But in the garden-bower the bride 

And bride-maids singing are ; 
And hark the little vesper bell. 

Which biddeth me to prayer ! 



595 



CXXXIII. Some editions, for an agony, in the gloss, read and 
agony. 

CXXXIV. What great traditional "wanderer" of romance does 
this suggest ? Teach. Used in what sense ? That moment. Some 
editions read the. 

CXXXV. Observe the transition from the uproar to the little ves- 
per Ml. After this the whole tone of the poem changes. This 
stanza is what, in music, would be called a modulating passage, 
changing key and subject. 



THE ANCIENT MARINER 



47 



CXXXVI. 

Wedding-Guest ! this soul hath been 

Alone on a wide, wide sea : 
So lonely ^twas, that God himself 

Scarce seemed there to be. 



600 



CXXXVII. 

sweeter than the marriage-feast, 

'Tis sweeter far to me, 
To walk together to the kirk 

With a goodly company ! — 



CXXXVIII. 

To walk together to the kirk. 

And all together pray. 
While each to his great Father bends. 
Old men, and babes, and loving friends. 

And youths and maidens gay ! 



605 



CXXXIX. 

Farewell, farewell ! but this I tell 
To thee, thou Wedding-Guest ! 

He prayeth well, who loveth well 
Both man and bird and beast. 



610 



CXXXVI. and CXXXVII. Introduced by CXXXV. Why does he 
prefer the kirk ? What reason does the preceding stanza suggest ? 

CXXXVIII. Oay. Happy, or brightly dressed. Does it modify 
youths and maidens, or only maidens ? 

CXXXIX. and CXL. Note the repetition. Note also the progres- 
sion from ivell to best. Observe how the verse lingers on loveth. 



48 / THE ANCIENT MARINER 



CXL. 



He prayeth best, who loveth best 

All things both great and small ; 615 

For the dear God who loveth us. 

He made and loveth all.'* 



CXLL 

The Mariner, whose eye is bright. 

Whose beard with age is hoar. 
Is gone : and now the Wedding-Guest 620 

Turned from the bridegroom's door. 



OXLII. 

He went like one that hath been stunned. 

And is of sense forlorn : 
A sadder and a wiser man. 

He rose the morrow morn. 625 



CXL. All things both great and small. Is there a suggestion of 
Psalms civ., 35 ? Compare the last stanza of Wordsworth's Hart- 
leap Well: 

" One lesson, shepherd, let us two divide, 

Taught both by what she shows and what conceals, 
Never to blend our pleasure or our pride 
With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels." 

Read that poem. Compare its lesson with that of this poem. Which 
has the more positive, the more far reaching moral ? 

CXLI. Why did the Wedding-Guest turn away ? 

CXLII. What does sense mean here ? What two meanings has the 
word? Forlorn. Abandoned. Why was the Wedding-Guest "sad- 
der and wiser " ? 



Longmans' English Classics. 

EDITED BY 

GEORGE RICE CARPENTER, A.B.. 

Professor of Rhetoric and English Composition in Columbia College. 



LONGMANS' ENGLISH CLASSICS. 

EDITED BY 

GEORGE RICE CARPENTER, A.B., 

Professor of Rhetoric and English Composition in Columbia College. 

This series is designed for use in secondary schools 
in accordance with the system of study recommended and 
outUned by the National Committee of Ten, and in direct 
preparation for the uniform entrance requirements in Eng- 
lish, now adopted by the principal American colleges and 
universities. 



Each Volume contains full Notes, Introductions, Bibliographies, 
and other explanatory and illustrative matter. Crown 8vo, cloth. 



Books Prescribed for the i8g6 Examinations. 

FOR READING. 

Irving's Tales of a Traveller. With an introduction by 
Professor Brander Matthews, of Columbia College, and explan- 
atory notes by the general editor of the series. With Portrait 
of Irving. [^Rcady. 

George Eliot's Silas Marner. Edited, with introduction and 
notes, by Robert Herrick, A.B., Assistant Professor of Rhetoric 
in the University of Chicago. With Portrait of George Eliot. 

\^Ready. 

Scott's Woodstock. Edited, with introduction and notes, by 
Bliss Perry, A.M., Professor of Oratory and yEstb.etic Criticism 
in the College of New Jersey. With Portrait of Sir Walter 
Scott. {^Ready. 



LONGMANS' ENGLISH CLASSICS 



Books Prescribed for i8g6 — Continued. 
Defoe's History of the Plague in London. Edited, with 
introduction and notes, by Professor G. R. Carpenter, of 
Columbia College. With Portrait of Defoe. [Ready. 

Macaulay's Essay on Milton. Edited, with introduction and 
notes, by James Greenleaf Croswell, A.B., Head-master of the 
Brearley School, New York, formerly Assistant Professor of 
Greek in Harvard University. With Portrait of Macaulay. 

[Ready. 

Shakspere's a Midsummer Night's Dream. Edited, with 

introduction and notes, by George Pierce Baker, A.B., Assistant 

Professor of English in Harvard University. With Frontispiece. 

[ Just Ready. 
FOR STUDY. 

Webster's First Bunker Hill Oration, together with other 
Addresses relating to the Revolution. Edited, with introduction 
and notes, by Fred Nev/ton Scott, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of 
Rhetoric in the University of Michigan. With Portrait of 
Daniel Webster. \_Ready. 

Shakspere's Merchant of Venice. Edited, with introduction 
and notes, by Francis B. Gummere, Ph.D., Professor of English 
in Haverford College , Member of the Conference on English 
of the National Committee of Ten. With Portrait. 

[ Just Ready. 

Milton's L'Allegro, II Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas. 
Edited, with introductions and notes, by William P. Trent, A.M., 
Professor of English in the University of the South. With 
Portrait of Milton. [Ready. 

' ' I take great pleasure in acknowledging, if I have not waited too 
long, the receipt of the two beautiful volumes in your English Classics, 
Irving's ' Tales of a Traveller ' and George Eliot's ' Silas Marner,' and 
in thanking you for them. They are not only thoroughly well edited, 
but excellent specimens of book-making, such books as a student may 
take pleasure in having, not merely for a task book but for a permanent 
possession. It is a wise project on your part, I think, to accustom 
young students to value books for their intrinsic worth, and that by the 
practical way of making the books good and attractive. I shall take 
great pleasure, as occasion arises, to recommend the series." 

— Prof. John F. Genung, Amherst College. 



LONGMANS' ENGLISH CLASSICS 



" You are to be congratulated upon the excellence of the series of 
English Classics which you are now publishing, if I may judge of it 
by the three numbers I have examined. ... Of these, the intro- 
ductions, the suggestions to teachers, the chronological tables, and the 
notes are most admirable in design and execution. The editor-in-chief 
and his associates have rendered a distinct service to secondary schools, 
and the publishers have done superior mechanical work in the issue of 
this series." — Charles C. Ramsay, Principal of Durfee High School, 
Fall River, Mass. 

"With the two (volumes) I have already acknowledged and these 
four, I find myself increasingly pleased as I examine. As a series the 
books have two strong points: there is a unity of method in editing that 
I have seen in no other series; the books are freer from objections in 
regard to the amount and kind of editing than any other series I know." 
— Byron Groce, Master in English, Boston Latin School. 

"I am your debtor for two specimens of your series of English 
Classics, designed for secondary schools in preparation for entrance 
examinations to college. With their clear type, good paper, sober and 
attractive binding — good enough for any library shelves — with their 
introductions, suggestions to teachers, and notes at the bottom of the 
pages, I do not see how much more could be desired." 

—Prof. D. L. Maulsby, Tufts College. 

"Admirably adapted to accomplish what you intend — to interest 
young persons in thoughtful reading of noble literature. The help given 
seems just what is needed; its generosity is not of the sort to make the 
young student unable to help himself. I am greatly pleased with the plan 
and with its execution." — Prof. C. B. Bradley, University of California; 
Member of English Conference of the National Committee of Ten. 

" Let me thank you for four more volumes of your excellent series 
of English Classics. ... As specimens of book-making they are 
among the most attractive books I have ever seen for school use; and the 
careful editing supplies just enough information to stimulate a young 
reader. I hope that the series may soon be completed and be widely 
used." — Prof. W. E. Mead, Wesleyan University. 

"The series is admirably planned, the ' Suggestions to Teachers' 
being a peculiarly valuable feature. I welcome all books looking toward 
better English teaching in the secondary schools." 

— Prof. Katherine Lee Bates, Wellesley College. 

" They are thoroughly edited and attractively presented, and cannot 
fail to be welcome when used for the college entrance requirements in 
English." — Prof. Charles F. Richardson, Dartmouth College. 



LONGMANS' ENGLISH CLASSICS 



Irving's • Tales of a Traveller.' 

" I feel bound to say that, if the series of English Classics is 
carried out after the plan of this initial volume, it will contribute much 
toward making the study of literature a pure delight." 

— Prof. A. G. Newcomer, Leland Stanford Jr. University. 

" I have looked through the first volume of your English Classics, 
Irving's ' Tales of a Traveller,' and do not see how literature could be 
made more attractive to the secondary schools." — Prof. Edward A. 
Allen, University of Missouri ; Member of the English Conference of 
the National Committee of Ten. 

" I have received your Irving's ' Tales of a Traveller' and examined 
it with much pleasure. The helpful suggestions to teachers, the 
judicious notes, the careful editing, and the substantial binding make it 
the most desirable volume for class use on the subject, that has come to 
my notice." — Edwin Cornell, Principal of Central Valley Union 
School, N. Y. 

George Eliot's ' Silas Marner.' 

' ' This book is really attractive and inviting. The introduction, 
particularly the suggestions to pupils and teachers, is a piece of real 
helpfulness and wisdom." 

— D. E. Bowman, Principal of High School, Waterville, Me. 

"The edition of 'Silas Marner' recently sent out by you leaves 
nothing undone. I find the book handsome, the notes sensible and 
clear. I'm glad to see a book so well adapted to High School needs, 
and I shall recommend it, without reserve, as a safe and clean book to 
put before our pupils." 

— James W. McLane, Central High School, Cleveland, O. 

Scott's ' Woodstock.' 

" Scott's ' Woodstock,' edited by Professor Bliss Perry, deepens the 
impression made by the earlier numbers that this series, Longmans' 
English Classics, is one of unusual excellence in the editing, and will 
prove a valuable auxiliary in the reform of English teaching now 
generally in progress. . . . We have, in addition to the unabridged 
text of the novel, a careful editorial introduction ; the author's intro- 
duction, preface and notes ; a reprint of ' The Just Devil of Woodstock'; 
and such foot-notes as the student will need as he turns from page to 
page. Besides all this apparatus, many of the chapters have appended 
a few suggestive hints for character-study, collateral reading and dis- 
cussions of the art of fiction. All this matter is so skillfully distributed 
that it does not weigh upon the conscience, and is not likely to make the 



LONGMAXS' ENGLISH CLASSICS 



student forget that he is, after all, reading a novel chiefly for the 
pleasure it affords. The entire aim of this volume and its companions 
is literary rather than historical or linguistic, and in this fact their chief 
value is to be found." — The Dial. 

' ' I heartily approve of the manner in which the editor's work has 
been done. This book, if properly used by the teacher and supple- 
mented by the work so clearly suggested in the notes, may be made of 
great value to students, not only as literature but as affording oppor- 
tunity for historical research and exercise in composition." 

— Lillian G. Kimball, State Normal School, Oshkosh, Wis. 

Defoe's 'History of the Plague in London.' 

"He gives an interesting biography of Defoe, an account of his 
works, a discussion of their ethical influence (including that of this 
'somewhat sensational' novel), some suggestions to teachers and students, 
and a list of references for future study. This is all valuable and sugges- 
tive. The reader wishes that there were more of it. Indeed, the criticism 
I was about to offer on this series is perhaps their chief excellence. 
One wishes that the introductions were longer and more exhaustive. 
For, contrary to custom, as expressed in Gratiano's query, 'Who riseth 
from a feast with that keen appetite that he sits down ? ' the young 
student will doubtless finish these introductions hungering for more. 
And this, perhaps, was the editor's object in view, viz., that the intro- 
ductory and explanatory matter should be suggestive and stimulating 
rather than complete and exhaustive ! " — Educational Reviezv. 

" I have taken great pleasure in examining your edition of Defoe's 
' Plague in London.' The introduction and notes are beyond reproach, 
and the binding and typography are ideal. The American school-boy 
is to be congratulated that he at length may study his English from 
books in so attractive a dress." — George X. McKnight, Instructor in 
English, Cornell University. 

"I am greatly obliged to you for the copy of the 'Journal of the 
Plague.' I am particularly pleased with Professor Carpenter's intro- 
duction and his handling of the difficult points in Defoe's life." — Ham- 
mond Lamont, A.B., Associate Professor of Composition and Rhetoric 
in Brown University. 

Macaulay's 'Essay on Milton.' 

" I have examined the Milton and am much pleased with it ; it fully 
sustains the high standard of the other works of this series ; the intro- 
duction, the suggestions to teachers, and the notes are admirable." 

— William Nichols, The Nichols School, Buffalo, N. Y. 



LONGMANS' ENGLISH CLASSICS 



' ' I beg to acknowledge with thanks the receipt of Macaulay's 
' Essay on Milton ' and Webster's ' First Bunker Hill Oration ' in your 
series of English Classics. These works for preparatory study are 
nowhere better edited or presented in more artistic form. I am glad you 
find it possible to publish so good a book for so little money." 

— Prof. W. H. Crawshaw, Colgate University. 

" I am especially pleased with Mr, Croswell's introduction to, and 
notes at the bottom of the page of, his edition of Macaulay's ' Essay on 
Milton.' I have never seen notes on a text that were more admirable 
than these. They contain just the information proper to impart, and 
are unusually well expressed. 

— Charles C. Ramsay, Principal of Fall River High School. 

Webster's 'First Bunker Hill Oration,' Etc. 

' ' Permit me to acknowledge with gratitude the receipt of Dr. Scott's 
edition of Webster's ' First Bunker Hill Oration ' and other addresses re- 
lating to the Revolution. I am greatly pleased with the volume, both in 
its externals and in the judicious helps that accompany the text. A 
faithful use of the suggestions herein offered would certainly make for 
genuine culture." — Ray Greene Huling, Principal of English High 
School, Cambridge, Mass. ; Secretary of the New England Association of 
Colleges and Preparatory Schools; Member of the History Conference of 
the National Committee of Ten. 

" ' First Bunker Hill Oration ' and the ' Essay on Milton ' seem in 
every way to be the handsomest and best edited edition on the market." 
— Theodore C. Mitchell, Secretary of the Schoolmasters' Association 
of New York and Vicinity. 

Books Prescribed for the i8gy Examinations. 

FOR READING. 

Shakspere's As You Like It. With an introduction by Barrett 
Wendell, A.B., Assistant Professor of English in Harvard 
University, and notes by William Lyon Phelps, Ph.D., Instructor 
in English Literature in Yale University. [Ready. 

Defoe's History of the Plague in London. Edited, with 
introduction and notes, by Professor G. R. Carpenter, of 
Columbia College. With Portrait of Defoe. [Ready. 

Irving's Tales of a Traveller. With an introduction by- 
Professor Brander Alatthews, of Columbia College, and explan- 
atory notes by the general editor of the series. With Portrait 
of Irving. [Ready. 



LONGMANS' ENGLISH CLASSICS 



Books Prescribed for iSgy — Continued. 

George Eliot's Silas Marner. Edited, with introduction and 
notes' by Robert Herrick, A.B., Assistant Professor of Rhetoric 
in the University of Chicago. With Portrait of George EHot. 

[Ready. 

FOR STUDY. 

Shakspere's Merchant of Venice. Edited, with introduction 
and notes, by Francis B. Gummere, Ph.D., Professor of Enghsh 
in Haverford College; Member of the Conference on English 
of the National Committee of Ten. With Portrait. 

[Just Ready. 

Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America. Edited, 
with introduction and notes, by Albert S. Cook, Ph.D., Professor 
of the English Language and Literature in Yale University. 
With Portrait of Burke. [^Preparing. 

Scott's Marmion. Edited, with introduction and notes, by 
Robert Morss Lovett, A.B., Instructor in Rhetoric in the 
University of Chicago. With Portrait of Sir Walter Scott. 

\Preparing. 

Macaulay's Life of Samuel Johnson. Edited, with intro- 
duction and notes, by the Rev. Huber Gray Buehler, of the 
Hotchkiss School, Lakeville, Conn. With Portrait of Johnson. 

\^In the Press. 

Books Prescribed for the i8g8 Examinations, 

FOR READING. 

Milton's Paradise Lost. Books I. and II. Edited, with 
introduction and notes, by Edward Everett Hale, Jr., Ph.D., 
Professor of Rhetoric and Logic in Union College. With 
Portrait of Milton. [Preparing. 

Pope's Homer's Iliad. Books I., VL, XXII., and XXIV. 
Edited, with introduction and notes, by William H. Maxwell, 
A.M., Superintendent of Public Instruction, Brooklyn, N. Y. ; 
Chairman National Committee of Fifteen ; Member of English 
Conference of the National Committee of Ten. With Portrait 
of Pope. [Preparing. 



LONGMANS' ENGLISH CLASSICS 



Books Prescribed for /<?p^— Continued. 

The Sir Roger de Coverley Papers, from "The Spectator." 

Edited, with introduction and notes, by D. O. S. Lowell. A.M., 

of the Roxbury Latin School, Roxbury, Mass. With Portrait 

of Addison. [In the Press. 

Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield. Edited, with intro- 
duction and notes, by Mary A. Jordan, A.M., Professor of 
Rhetoric and Old English in Smith College. With Portrait of 
Goldsmith. [Preparing. 

Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Edited, 
with introduction and notes, by Herbert Bates, A.B.. Instructor 
in English in the University of Nebraska. With Portrait of 
Coleridge. t^^^^-^'' 

Southey's Life of Nelson. Edited, with introduction and 
notes, by Edwin L. Miller, A.M., of the Englewood High 
School, Illinois. With Portrait of Nelson. [In the Press. 

Carlyle's Essay on Burns. Edited, with introduction and 
notes, by Wilson Farrand, A.M., Associate Principal of the 
Newark Academy, Newark, N. J. With Portrait of Burns. 

[In the Press. 

FOR STUDY. 

Shakspere's Macbeth. Edited, with introduction and notes, 
by John Matthews Manly, Ph.D., Professor of the English 
Language in Brown University. With Portrait. [Preparing. 

Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America. Edited, 
with introduction and notes, by Albert S. Cook, Ph.D., Pro- 
fessor of the English Language and Literature in Yale 
University. With Portrait of Burke. [Preparing. 

De Ouincey's Flight of a Tartar Tribe. Edited, with intro- 
du^ciion and notes, by Charles Sears Baldwin, Ph.D., Instructor 
in Rhetoric in Yale University. With Portrait of De Ouincey. 

[Preparing. 

*^* Other Volumes to follow. 



LONGMANS' ENGLISH CLASSICS 



It has been the aim of the publishers to secure editors 
of high reputation for scholarship, experience, and skill, 
and to provide a series thoroughly adapted, by uniformity 
of plan and thoroughness of execution, to present educa- 
tional needs. The chief distinguishing features of the 
series are the following : 

I. Each volume contains full "Suggestions for Teach- 
ers and Students," with bibliographies, and, in many 
cases, lists of topics recommended for further reading or 
study, subjects for themes and compositions, specimen 
examination papers, etc. It is therefore hoped that the 
series will contribute largely to the working out of sound 
methods in teaching English. 

2. The works prescribed for reading are treated, in every 
case, as literature, not as texts for narrow linguistic study, 
and edited with a view to interesting the student in the 
book in question both in itself and as representative of a 
literary type or of a period of literature, and of leading 
him on to read other standard works of the same age or 
kind uhderstandingly and appreciatively. 

3. These editions are not issued anonymously, nor are 
they hackwork, — the result of mere compilation. They 
are the original work of scholars and men of letters who 
are conversant with the topics of which they treat. 

4. Colleges and preparatory schools are both repre- 
sented in the list of editors (the preparatory schools more 
prominently in the lists for 1897 and 1898), and it is in- 
tended that the series shall exemplify the ripest methods 
of American scholars for the teaching of English — the 
result in some cases of years of actual experience in 
secondary school work, and, in others, the formulation of 
the experience acquired by professors who observe care- 
fully the needs of students who present themselves for 
admission to college. 

5. The volumes are uniform in size and style, are well 
printed and bound, and constitute a well-edited set of 
standard works, fit for permanent use and possession — a 
nucleus for a library of English literature. 



LONGMANS, GREEN, ^ CO:s PUBLICATIONS. n 

ENGLISH HISTORY IN SHAKESPEARE'S 

PLAYS. 

By Beverley E. Warner, M.A. With Bibliography, Chronological 
Tables, and Index. Crown 8vo, 331 pages, f 1.75. 

This volume had its origin in a course of lectures on the study of history as 
illustrated in the plays of Shakespeare. The lectures have been recast, pruned, 
and amplified, and much machinery has been added in the way of tables of 
contents, bibliography, chronological tables, and index. With such helps it 
is hoped that this book may effect a working partnership between the chronicle 
of the formal historian and the epic of the dramatic poet. They are addressed 
especially to those readers and students of English History who may not 
have discovered what an aid to the understanding of certain important phases 
of England's national development lies in thes*^ historical plays, which cover a 
period of three hundred years — from King John and Magna Charta to Henry 
VIII. and the Reformation. 

" This unique book should be generally and carefully read. As a commen- 
tary upon the history in Shakespeare's plays, it is highly interesting ; while the 
views of English History, shown through the medium of the great poet, are 
admirable. After reading the work, one should be a far more appreciative 
student of English History, and a more interested reader of Shakespeare." 

— Public Opinion, New York. 

" The work has been well done, and the volume will be a valuable aid to 
students, particularly the younger ones, and to the average reader, in connec- 
tion with this interesting group of plays."— Z/V^-ra^j World, Boston. 

" Mr. Warner's book is thoroughly interesting, and really valuable. It calls 
special attention to the genuine historical value of the plays which he examines, 
whether they be genuine histories or not."— 77z^ Churchman. 

" To read Mr. Warner's learned and interesting pages is to come back to 
Shakespeare with a new appreciation."— i9<7^/^ Buyer. 

"Mr. Warner's book is full of suggestion gathered not merely from 
Shakespeare, but from the chronicles which he used and from the efforts of 
modern historians to restore the life of the period to which the plays relate." 

— Tribune, New York. 

" We take much pleasure in commending this volume to readers and stu- 
dents of the great dramatist. It presents in a systematic, intelhgent, and very 
useful order a large amount of critical information as to the historical plays 
which adds enormously to their interest, and which without this aid can be 
obtained only at the cost of much searching of publications not easy to be had, 
such as the ' New Shakespeare Society's Transactions,' or T. P. Courtenay's 
' Commentaries on the Historical Plays of Shakespeare.' This labor and much 
more in the way of the direct study of the dramas, and of the obscure and diffi- 
cult history with which they are concerned, has been done by the author of this 
volume, and its results presented in a clear, condensed, and highly interesting 
form, which we have found to be so satisfactory as to be practically indispensa- 
ble in a small working Shakespearian Whraxy."— Independent, New York. 

" What the chronicle plays of Shakespeare have accomplished as a contribu- 
tion to the understanding of English history is clearly set forth in Mr. Warner's 
solidly excellent book." — Chatauquan. 

LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO., 15 East Sixteenth Street New York. 



12 



LONGMANS, GREEN, ^ CO: S PUBLICATIONS. 



PLAYS OF SHAKESPEARE. 



Falcon Editio7i. 

The following volumes, each with Introduction, 
now ready. Price 35 cents each play : 



Notes, and Glossary, are 



Julius Caesar. By H. C. Beech- 
ING, Rector of Yattendon, and late 
Exhibitioner of Balliol College, 
Oxford. 

The Merchant of Venice. By H. 

C. Beeching. 

King Henry IV. Part I. By 
Oliver Elton, late Scholar of 
Corpus Christi College, Oxford. 

King Henry IV. Part II. By A. 

D. Innes, M.A., late Scholar of 
Oriel College, Oxford. 

King Henry V. By A. D, Innes, 

M.A. 
King John. By Oliver Elton. 



Twelfth Night. By H. Howard 
Crawley. 

King Richard III. By W. H. 
Payne Smith, M.A., Senior Stu- 
dent of Christ Church, Oxford ; and 
Assistant Master at Rugby School. 

Much Ado About Nothing. By 
A. W. Verity, M. A., late Scholar 
of Trinity College, Cambridge. 

Coriolanus. By H. C. Beeching. 

Taming of the Shrew. By H H. 
Crawley. 

King Richard II. By E. K. 
Chambers, B.A. 

The Tempest. By A. C. Liddell, 
M.A. 



\* " yulius CcBsar" is presa'ibed for the entrance examinations of 1894, 
" Twelfth Night" for 1895, and the " Merchant of Venice " for 1894, 1895, and 
1896, at Harvard and other universities and colleges. 

" The only school edition of Shakespeare's plays, so far as I know, the notes 
of which are aesthetic rather than linguistic, stimulant rather than dispiriting, is 
that called 'the Falcon.' From 'The Taming of the Shrew' in this edition, 
for example, a student could learn the use of the gallery over the stage, and so 
might get his eyes opened a little to the physical conditions of the theatre un- 
der Elizabeth — conditions which dominate the form of the Elizabethan drama." 
— Prof. Brander Matthews, in the Educational Review, April, 1892. 

" The ' Falcon' Edition has earned a reputation for scholarship, taste, and 
judgment. The notes are in all cases excellent. Everything that is likely to 
present any difficulty is explained clearly, accurately, and not verbosely ; and 
familiarity is shown both with the writings of the Elizabethans and with the 
Shakespearean scholarship of to-day." — yournal of Education. 

''A particularly pure text, with introductory remarks, glossaries, and notes 
of an excellence for which this edition is renowned." — Educational Times. 

" An edition now well known among teachers and students, and which offers 
much instruction and enjoyment to the thoughtful reader. The editing is char- 
acterized by conscientious care, judgment, and skill." — Schoolmaster. 

" Mr. Beeching's Julius Ccssar is not only an excellent school-book, but a 
model of good Shakespeare editing for all readers ; and his Merchant of Venice 
is no less." — Academy. 



LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO., 15 East Sixteenth Street, New York. 



LONGMA.VS, green; ^ CO.' S PUBLICATIONS. 



EPOCHS OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

MESSRS. LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO. have the pleasure to state 
ihat they are now publishing a short series of books treating of the history 
of America, under the general title Epochs of American History. The 
series is under the editorship of Dr, Albert Bushnell Hart, Assistant 
Professor of History in Harvard College, who has also prepared all the maps 
for the several volumes. Each volume contains about 300 pages, similar in 
size and style to the page of the volumes in Messrs. Longmans' series, 
' Epochs of Modern History,' with full marginal analysis, working bil^liugra^ 
phies, maps, and index. The volumes are issued separately, and each is 
complete in itself. The volumes now ready provide a continuous history 
of the United States from the foundation of the Colonies to the present 
time, suited to and intended for class use as well as for general reading and 
reference. 

%* The volumes of this series already issued have been adopted for use as text- 
books in nearly all the leading Colleges and in many Normal Schools and other 
institutio7ts. A prospectus, showing Contetits and scope of each volume, specimen 
pages, etc. , will be sent on application to the Publishers. 



I. THE COLONIES, 1492-1750. 

By Reuben Gold Thwaites, Secretary of the State Historical Society of 
Wisconsin ; author of *' Historic Waterways," etc. With four colored 
maps. pp. xviii.-30i. Cloth. $1.25. 

CORNELL university. 

*' I beg leave to acknowledge your courtesy in sending me a copy of the first 
volume in the series of ' Epochs of American History,' which I have read with 
great interest and satisfaction. I am pleased, as everyone must be, with the 
mechanical execution of the book, with the maps, and with the fresh and valua- 
ble 'Suggestions' and 'References.' .... The work itself appears to 
me to be quite remarkable for its comprehensiveness, and it presents a vast 
array of subjects in a way that is admirably fair, clear and orderly." — Professor 
Moses Coit Tyler, Ithaca, N. Y. 

Vi^ILLIAMS COLLEGE. 

" It is just the book needed for college students, not too brief to be uninter- 
esting, admirable in its plan, and well furnished with references to accessible 
authorities."— Professor Richard A. Rice, Williamstown, Mass. 

VASSAR COLLEGE. 

" Perhaps the best recommendation of ' Thwaites' American Colonies ' is 
the fact that the day after it was received I ordered copies for class-room use. 
The book is admirable." — Professor Lucy M. Salmon, Poughkeepsie, N. Y. 

" All that could be desired. This volume is more like a fair treatment of the 
whole subject of the colonies than any work of the sort yet produced.'' 

— The Critic. 

" The subject is virtually a fresh one as approached by Mr. Thwaites. It is 
a pleasure to call especial attention to some most helpful bibliographical notes 
provided at the head of each chapter '' — The Nation. 



LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO., 15 East Sixteenth Street, New York. 



LONGMANS, GREEN, ^ CO:S PUBLICATIONS. 



EPOCHS OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

II. FORMATION OF THE UNION, 1750-1829. 

By Albert Bushnell Hart, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of History ;n 
Harvard University, Member of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 
Author of "Introduction to the Study of Federal Government," 
"Epoch Maps," etc. With five colored maps. pp. XX.-278. Cloth. 
$1.25. 

The second volume of the Epochs of American History aims to follow 
out the principles laid down for "The Colonies," — the study of causes 
rather than of events, the development of the American nation out of scattered 
and inharmonious colonies. The throwing off of English control, the growth 
cut of narrow political conditions, the struggle against foreign domination, and 
the extension of popular government, are all parts of the uninterrupted process 
of the Formation of the Union. 

LELAND STANFORD JR. UNIVERSITY. 

" The large and sweeping treatment of the subject, which shows the true re- 
lations of the events preceding and following the revolution, to the revolution 
itself, is a real addition to the literature of the subject ; while the bibliography 
prefixed to each chapter, adds incalculably to the value of the work." — Mary 
Sheldon Barnes, Palo Alto, Cal. 

'• It is a careful and conscientious study of the period and its events, and 
should find a place among the text-books of our public schools." 

— Boston Transcript. 

" Professor Hart has compressed a vast deal of information into his volume, 
and makes many things most clear and striking. His maps, showing the terri- 
torial growth of the United States, are extremely interesting." 

— A^ew York Times. 

" . . The causes of the Revolution are clearly and cleverly condensed into 
a few pages. . . The maps in the work are singularly useful even to adults. 
There are five of these, which are alone worth the price of the volume." 

— Magazine of American History. 

"The formation period of our nation is treated with much care and with 
great precision. Each chapter is prefaced with copious references to authori- 
ties, which are valuable to the student who desires to pursue his reading more 
extensively. There are five valuable maps showing the growth of our country 
by successive stages and repeated acquisition of territory." 

— Boston Advertiser. 

" Dr. Hart is not only a master of the art of condensation, ... he is 
what is even of greater importance, an interpreter of history. He perceives 
the logic of historic events ; hence, in his condensation, he does not neglect 
proportion, and more than once he gives the student valuable clues to the 
solution of historical problems." — Atlantic Monthly. 

" A valuable volume of a valuable series. The author has written with a 
full knowledge of his subject, and we have little to say except in praise." 

— English Historical Review. 



LONGMANS, GREEN, &CO., 15 East Sixteenth Street, New York 



LOVGMANS, GREEN, &- CO/S PUBLICATIONS. 



EPOCHS OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 



III. DIVISION AND RE-UNION, 1829-1889. 

By WooDROW Wilson, Ph.D., LL.D., Professor of Jurisprudence in 

Princeton College ; Author of "Congressional Government," "The 

State— Elements of Historical and Practical Politics," etc., etc. With 

five colored Maps. 346 pages. Cloth, $1.25. 

"We regret that we have not space for more quotations from this uncom 
monly strong, impartial interesting book. Giving only enough facts to 
elucidate thie matter discussed, it omits no important questions. It furnishes 
the reader clear-cut views of the right and the wrong ol them all. It gives ad- 
mit able pen-portraits of the great personages of the period with as much free- 
dom from bias, and as much pains to be just, as if the author were dehneating 
Pericles, or Alcibiades, Sulla, or Caesar. Dr. Wilson has earned the gratitude of 
seekers after truth by his masterly production."— A". C. University Magaziyie. 

" This admirable little volume is one of the few books which nearly meet our 
ideal of history. It is causal history in the truest sense, tracing the workings of 
latent influences and far-reaching conditions of their outcome in striking fact, 
yet the whole current of events is kept in view, and the great personalities of 
the time, the nerve-centers of history, live intensely and in due proportion in 
these pages. We do not know the equal of this book for a brief and trust- 
worthy, and, at the satne time, a brilliantly written and sufficient history of these 
sixty years. We heartily commend it, not only for general reading, but as an 
admirable text-book." — Post-Graduate a7id IVooster Quatterly. 

" Considered as a general history of the United States from 1829 to i88g, 
his book is marked by excellent sense of proportion, extensive knowledge, im- 
partiality of judgment, unusual power of summarizing, and an acute political 
sense. Few writers can more vividly set forth the views of parties." 

— Atlantic Monthly. 

" Students of United States history may thank Mr. Wilson for an extreme- 
ly clear and careful rendering of a period very difficult to handle . . . they 
will find themselves materially aided in easy comprehension of the political 
situation of the country by the excellent maps." — N. V Times. 

" Professor Wilson writes in a clear and forcible style. . . , The bibli- 
ographical references at the head of each chapter are both well selected and 
well arranged, and add greatly to the value of the work, which appears to be 
especially designed for use in instruction in colleges and preparatory schools." 

— Vule Review. 

" It is written in a style admirably clear, vigorous, and attractive, a thorough 
grasp of the subject is shown, and the development of the theme is lucid and 
orderly, while the tone is judicial and fair, and the deductions sensible and 
dispassionate — so far as we can see. ... It would be difficult to construct 
a better manual of the subject than this, and it adds greatly to the value of this 
useful series." — Hartford Courant. 

". . . One of the most valuable historical works that has appeared in 
many years. The delicate period of our country's history, with which this 
work is largely taken up, is treated by the author with an impartiality that is 
almost unique." — Columbia Law Times. 



LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO., 15 East Sixteenth Street, New York. 



LOXCMANS, GREEh\ &- CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 

ENGLISH HISTORY FOR AMERICANS. 

By Thomas Wentworth IIigginson, Author of "Young Folks' His- 
tory of the United States," eic, and Edward Channing, Assistant 
Professor of History in Harvard University. With 77 Illustrations, 6 
Colored Maps, Bibliography, a Chronological Table of Contents, and 
Index. i2mo. Pp. xxxii-334. Teachers' price, ^1.20. 

The name " English History for Americans," which suggests the key-note of 
this book, is based on the simple fact that it is not the practice of American 
readers, old or young, to give to English history more than a limited portion of 
their hours of study. ... It seems clear that such readers will use their 
time to the best advantage if they devote it mainly to those events in English 
annals which have had the most direct influence on the history and institutions 
of their own lanfl. . . . '1 he authors of this book have therefore boldly 
ventured to modify in their narrative the accustomed scale of proportion ; while 
it has been their wish, in the treatment of every detail, to accept the best re- 
sult of modern English investigation, and especially to avoid all unfair 01 
one-sided judgments. . . . Extracts from Author'' s Preface. 

DR. W, T. HARRIS, U. S. COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION. 

"I take great pleasure in acknowledging the receipt of the book, and be- 
lieve it to be the best introduction to English history hitherto made for the ufe 
of schools. It is just what is needed in the school and in the family. It is the 
first history of England that I have seen which gives proper attention to socio- 
logy and the evolution of political ideas, without neglecting what is picturesque 
and interesting to the popular taste. The device of placing the four historical 
maps at the beginning and end deserves special mention for its convenience. 
Allow me to congratulate you on the publication of so excellent a text-book." 

ROXBURY LATIN SCHOOL. 

". . . The most noticeable and commendable feature in the book seems 
to be its Unity. ... I felt the same reluctance to lay the volume down 
. . . that one experiences in reading a great play or a well-constructed 
novel. Several things besides the unity conspire thus seductively to lead the 
reader on. The page is open and attractive, the chapters are short, the type 
is large and clear, the pictures are well chos^^n and significant, a surprising 
number of anecdotes told in a crisp and masterful manner throw valuable side- 
lights on the main narrative ; the philosophy of history is undeniably there, but 
sugar-coated, and the graceful style would do credit to a Macaulay. I shall 
immediately recommend it for use in our school." — Dr. D. O. S. Lowell. 

LAWRENCEVILLE SCHOOL. 

" In answer to your note of February 23d I beg to say that we have intro- 
duced your Higginson's English History into our graduating class and are 
much pleased with it. Therefore whatever endorsement I, as a member of the 
Committee of Ten, could give the book has already been given by my action 
in placing it in our classes."— James C. Mackenzie, Lawrenceville, N. J. 

ANN ARBOR HIGH SCHOOL. 

" It seems to me the book will do for English history in this country what 
the 'Young Folks' History of the United States' has done for the history of our 
own country — and I consider this high praise." 

— T. G. Pattengill, Ann Arbor, Mich. 



LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO., 15 East Sixteenth Street, New York. 



LOIVGMAXS, green; 6- CO:S PUBLTCATJ OXS. 



A STUDENT'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND, from 
the Earliest Times to 1885. 

3y Samuel Rawson Gardiner, M.A., LL.D., Fellow of All Souls 
College, Oxford, etc.; Author of "The History of Kngland from the 
Accession of James I. to 1642/' etc. Illustrated under the superintend- 
ence of Mr. W, H. St. John Hope, Assistant Secretary of the Society 
of Antiquaries, and with the assistance in the choice of Portraits of 
Mr. George Scharf, C.B., F.S.A., who is recognized as the highest 
authority on the subject. In one Volume, with 378 Illustrations and 
full Index. Crown 8vo, cloth, plain, $3.00. 

The book is also published in three Volumes (each with Index and 
Table of Contents) as follows : 

VOLUME I.— B.C. 55-A.D. 1509. 410 pp. With 173 Illustrations and Index. 

Crown 8vo, $1.20. 
VOLUME II.— A.D. 1509-1689. 332 pp. With 96 Illustrations and Index. 

Crown 8vo, $1.20. 
VOLUME III.— A.D. 1689-1885. 374 pp. With 109 Illustrations and Index. 
Crown 8vo, $1.20. 

V Gardiner's "Student's History of England," through Part IX. (to 
1789), is recommended hy HARVARD UNIVERSITY as indicating the 
requirements for admission in this subject ; and the ENTIRE work is mads 
the basis for English history study in the University. 

YALE university. 

" Gardiner's • Student's History of England ' seems to me an admirable 
short history.''— Prof. C. H. Smith, New Haven, Conn. 
TRINITY COLLEGE, HARTFORD. 

" It is, in my opinion, by far the best advanced school history of England 
that I have ever seen. It is clear, concise, and scientific, and, at the same time, 
attractive and interesting. The illustrations are very good and a valuable 
addition to the book, as they are not mere pretty pictures, but of real historical 
and archseological interest."— Prof. Henry Ferguson. 

"A unique feature consists of the very numerous illustrations. They 
throw light on almost every phase of Enghsh hfe in all ages. . ._ . Never, 
perhaps, in such a treatise has pictorial illustration been used with so good 
effect. The alert teacher will find here ample material for useful lessons by 
leading the pupil to draw the proper inferences and make the proper interpre- 
tations and comparisons. . . . The style is compact, vigorous, and inter- 
esting. There is no lack of precision ; and, in the selection of the details, the 
hand of the scholar thoroughly conversant with the source and with the results 
of recent criticism is plainly revealed."— T-^^ Nation, N. Y. 

" . . . It is illustrated by pictures of real value ; and when accompanied 
by the companion ' Atlas of English History' is all that need be desired for its 
special purpose."— r,^^ Churchman, N. Y. 

'"':f,*A prospectus and specimen pages of Gardiner^ s " Student's History 
of England'''' will be sent free on application to the publishers. 

LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO., 15 East Sixteenth Street, New York. 



LONGMANS, GREEN, d- CO: S PUBLICATIONS, 



LONGMANS' SCHOOL GRAMMAR. 

By David Sai>mon. Part I„, Parts of Speech ; Part II., Classification 
and Inflection ; Part III., Analysis of Sentences ; Part IV., Plistory 
and Derivation. With Notes for Teachers and Index, New Edition, 
Revised. With Preface by E. A. Allen, Professor of English in the 
University of Missouri. i2mo. 272. pages. 75 cents. 

•' . . . One of the best working grammars vi'e have ever seen, and this 
applies to all its parts. It is excellently arranged and perfectly graded. Part 
IV., on History and Derivation, is as beautiful and interesting as it is valuable 
— but this might be said of the whole book." — New York Teacher. 

" The Grammar deserves to supersede all others with which we are ac- 
quainted." — N. Y. Natioti, July 2, 1891. 

PREFACE TO AMERICAN EDITION. 

It seems to be generally conceded that English grammar is worse taught 
and less understood than any other subject in the school course. This is, 
doubtless, largely due to the kind of text-books used, which, for the most part, 
require methods that violate the laws of pedagogy as well as of language. 
There are, however, two or three English grammars that are admirable com- 
mentaries on the facts of the language, but, written from the point of view of 
the scholar rather than of the learner, they fail to awaken any interest in the 
subject, and hence are not serviceable for the class-room. 

My attention was first called to Longmans' School Grammar by a favorable 
notice of it in the Nation. In hope of finding an answer to the inquiry of 
numerous teachers for " the best school grammar," I sent to the Publishers for 
a copy. An examination of the work, so far from resulting in the usual dis- 
appointment, left the impression that a successful text-book in a field strewn 
with failures had at last been produced. For the practical test of the class- 
room, I placed it in the hands of an accomplished grammarian, who had tried 
several of the best grammars published, and he declares the results to be most 
satisfactory. 

The author's simplicity of method, the clear statement of facts, the orderly 
arrangement, the wise restraint, manifest on every page, reveal the scholar and 
practical teacher. No one who had not mastered the language in its early his- 
torical development could have prepared a school grammar so free from sense- 
less rules and endless details. The most striking feature, minimum of precept, 
wd:A-/>«?^;;z of example, will commend itself to all teachers who follow rational 
methods. In this edition, the Publishers have adapted the illustrative sentences 
to the ready comprehension of American pupils, and I take pleasure in recom- 
mending the book, in behalf of our mother tongue, to the teachers of our Pub- 
lic and Private Schools, 

Edw^ard A. Allen. 
University of Missouri, May, 1891. 

MR. HALE'S SCHOOL, BOSTON. 

" I have used your Grammar nnd Composition during the last year in my 
school, and like them both very much indeed. They are the best books of the 
kind I have ever seen, and supply a want I have felt for a good many years." — 
Albert Hale, Boston, Mass. 



LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO., 15 East Sixteenth Street, New York. 



LONGMANS, GREEN, &= COrS PUBLICATIONS. 

LONGMANS' SCHOOL GV^AM^IAR.— OPINIONS, 
girls' high school, boston, mass, 

'' When you put Longmans' School Grammar in my hands, some year or 
two ago, I used it a little while with a boy of nine years, with perfect satisfac- 
tion and approval. The exigencies of the boy's school arrangements inter- 
cepted that course in grammar and caused the book to be laid aside. To-day 
I have taken the book and have examined it all, from cover to cover. It i^ 
simply a perfect grammar. Its beginnings are made with utmost gentleness 
and reasonableness, and it goes at least quite as far as in any portion of our 
public schools course it is, for the present, desirable to think of going. The 
author has adjusted his book to the very best conceivable methods of teaching, 
and goes hand in hand with the instructor as a guide and a help. Grammar 
should, so taught, become a pleasure to teacher and pupil. Especially do I 
relish the author's pages of ' Notes for Teachers,' at the end of the book. The 
man who could write these notes should enlarge them into a monograph on the 
teaching of English Grammar. He would, thereby, add a valuable contribu- 
tion to our stock of available pedagogic helps. I must add in closing, that 
while the book in question has, of course, but small occasion to touch disputed 
points of English Grammar, it nevrr incurs the censure that school grammars 
are almost sure to deserve, of insufficient acquaintance with modern linguistic 
science. In short, the writer has shown himself scientifically, as well as peda- 
gogically, altogether competent for his task." 

— Principal Samuel Thurber. 

high school, fort WAYNE, IND. 

" . . . . It is not often that one has occasion to be enthusiastic over a 
school-book, especially over an English Grammar, but out of pure enthusiasm, 
I write to express my grateful appreciation of this one. It is, without exception, 
the best English Grammar tliat I have ever seen for children from twelve to 
fifteen years of age. It is excellent in matter and method. Every page shows 
the hand of a wise and skilful teacher. The author has been content to present 
the facts of English Grammar in a way intelligible to children. The book is so 
intelligible and so interesting from start to finish that only the genius of dulness 
can make it dry. There are no definitions inconsistent with the facts of our 
language, no facts at war with the definitions. There are other grammars that 
are more '' complete " and as correct in teaching but not one to be compared 
with it in adaptation to the needs of young students. It will not chloroform the 
intelligence.'- — Principal C. T. Lane. 

high school, minooka, ill, 

" We introduced your School Grammar into our schools the first of this 
term, and are highly satisfied with the results. In my judgment there is no 
better work extant for the class of pupils for which it is designed." 

— Principal E. F. Adams. 

newark academy, newark, n, j. 

" We are using with much satisfaction your Longmans' School Grammar, 
adopted for use in our classes over a year since. Its strong points are simplic- 
ity of arrangement, and abundance of examples for practice. In these par- 
ticulars I know of no other book equal to it."— Dr. S. A, Farp.and. 

\* A Prospectus showing contents and specitncfi pages may be had of the Pub- 
Ushers. 



LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO., 15 East Sixteenth Street, New York. 



LONGMANS, GREEN, ^ CO: S PUBLICATIONS, 



LONGMANS' SCHOOL GEOGRAPHY. 

By George G. Chisholm, M.A., B. Sc, Author of "Handbook of Com- 
mercial Geography," "A Smaller Commercial Geography," etc., etc., 
and C. H. Leete, A.M., Ph.D., Fellow of the American Geographical 
Society. Fourth edition, revised, large i2mo, with 70 llhistralions. 384 
pages. $1.25. 

The aim of this text-book is to present in an attractive form those facts of 
geography that are really foundational, i.e., those that are most important to 
know, and are most effective as discipline. All countries and regions of the 
world are, tHertfore, not treated upon a uniform plan or according to a rigid 
outline, but that which is most distinctive and characteristic in each is presented 
with due relief And, in order that pupils may realize that to understand is in 
geography equally, if not more, important than to memorize, special promi- 
nence is given to the relation of cause and effect. The book is especially suited 
for use in Normal Schools and in Schools where more than elementary geo- 
graphical work is done. 

\* A descriptive circular of the book and of the Companion Atlas and Book 0/ 
Questions, tnay be fiadof the Publishers. 

MILTON ACADEMY. 

" It is the best Geography that I have seen, and we are using it in this school." 
— Harrison O. Apthorp, Milton, Mass. 

MARIANNA MALE INSTITUTE. 

" It is the best thing of the kind I have ever seen. It is just what I wish. I 
shall be pleased to introduce it." — T. A. Futrall, Marianna, Ark. 

preparatory school, WASHINGTON, D. C. 

"... Find it an excellent book. . . . It is striking and interesting — 
different from any work on the subject I have ever seen.'' — A. P. Montague. 

" The closing paragraph of the prospectus is much closer to the opinion of 
the reviewer than such paragraphs usually are : ' This text-book adapts itself to 
pupils of intelligence, and will be highly appreciated Dy all teachers imbued 
with a spirit for teaching real geography, not attempting to supersede their 
functions by dictating the length of the daily tasks or the qut^stions that shall 
be asked, but furnishing a body of material so selected, arranged, and pre- 
sented that its perusal is at once pleasurable, suggestive, and of substantial 
value.' This is perfectly true. . . . On the whole the book is remarkably 
successful." — Nation, N. Y. 

" This book is the forerunner of a change which must speedily be effected 
in geographical teaching, and is itself a product of the movement for reform in 
England, which originated with the Geographical Society." 

— IVisconsin yournal of Education. 

" . . . Probably the best book of the kind ever published in our language, 
and ought to help in improving the instruction of our schools in geography. 
Messrs. Chisholm and Leete's book is valuable for its method, and it is this fact 
which entitles it to the attention of teachers." — Boston Beacon. 

" It has a system of cross references that is very valuable and constantly 
reminds the pupil that all are parts of a whole. It does not merely state 
facts, but attempts to show a cause for each phenomenon, so that the study of 
geography is not mere memoriter work." — Educational Courant. 



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